Street Fighter YZ Tekken 201X: Fights After The Final Fight
by Quillon42
Summary: Occurring X years after the alleged "Ken"'s famed outer space fighting adventure in Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight, now all of the Street Fighters from SF4, as well as the Tekkeners from T6, are involved in fighting the cyboplasmic superaliens as the creatures crash down on Earth for one tangle of a tournament.
1. Chapter 1: North America (Streetcrown)

STREET FIGHTER BETA BEYOND OMEGA YZ TEKKEN 201X (WHICH IS A YEAR FOLLOWING 2010 AND PRECEDING 2020): MANY SEVERAL FIGHTS AFTER THE FINAL FIGHT

by Quillon42

PROLOGUE: A LITTLE MORE BACKGROUND

It was twenty-five to thirty years ago, according to the ill-informed Capcom character chroniclers and chronologists, that a caveman-coiffed Ken Masters had taken the championship title on the Street Fighter "Circuits." There was, at first, so much celebrating between Cave Ken and his new blushing bride Eliza.

After these events, in this alternate fictive reality, Cave Ken disappeared inexplicably. This was around the year 1990.

To say that Eliza Masters was upset did not begin to capture the woman's sentiment. Friends and family and enemies, all from Guile and his wife Julia Jane to Ryu and Sagat, fanned out in search of the mop-topped Masters of the universe of fighting. Guile even went so far as to go "dark" on his own solo mission for a while, withdrawing from his relatively quiet life with Julia Jane, as well as his simmering obsession over Charlie, to look for his brother-in-law Ken.

Then, around early 1992, Guile seemingly reemerged…though he was changed. Now he seemed to be sporting a face which was much more hardened and squared-off, replacing the softer, more dashing features Guile once flaunted. He explained to his family that, where he went in his period of AWOL, he suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of a terrible assailant, and he required extensive reconstructive facial surgery. But Julia Jane wasn't fully convinced of this, as the man seemed to be changed, irreversibly so.

And then after about twenty-X years, and countless klatches in which Julia Jane comforted Eliza over her lost husband, Ken Masters reemerged unto the Street Fighter world.

Ken's alterations were so much more involved and traumatic than those of Guile upon his own return. Eliza discovered, partially to her delight, that gone was the Cro-Magnon mane of hair that her husband once showed off, the follicles now frittered down to a mean blond buzzcut. As with Guile, Ken's facial features seemed somewhat changed as well, as his cheeks were much more chiseled now…but Eliza couldn't tell completely, though, regarding changes in the face in full—and neither could anyone else—as Ken's eyes were now obscured by the sleekest of black shades.

Eliza attempted to reach for her husband's glasses, only for him to wave her away abruptly, some strange glowing whitish-blue energy seething through the man's fists. "This energy exists in my eye sockets as well," he explained quickly to Eliza. "This energy, this…cyboplasm…it's like the expectoration of all concussive force. In other words, it's the human spit of what can be shot at others in Street Fighter matches."

Ken then demonstrated the extent of his power by throwing a hard haymaker, which caused a giant spitlike cyboprojectile to emit forth which destroyed the easy chair in their living room. Eliza jumped a little, amazed and frightened a bit at this new Ken.

"And I have it in my eyes as well, Eliza. If you tamper with my glasses, then…the optical cyboloogies would be…too devastating, for all of us to withstand."

So it was that Eliza went on with her husband, this transformed Ken, his eyes now like those of a concussive-halitosis-powered Marvel Cyclops, and together they withstood Mister Masters's new limitations for a time.

Then it was, weeks later, during which time this new Ken would go and come from a "workplace" about which Eliza knew nothing, that the man alighted home in a majorly disconcerted huff. "Eliza, I need to act quickly," he began. "She's…she's been murdered…and left as nothing…nothing but preserves on the floor.

"The Receptionist…"

Then he collapsed and lost consciousness.

By the time he came to, Ken found himself surrounded by Eliza, Julia Jane, and the new hard-faced Guile, but also by many other fighters, most of whom he did not know, as, because he was shunted away into the unknown around 1990, this reality's Ken never competed in the most famous Second Street Fighter Tournament, occurring around 1991.

Regardless, Ken was more than anxious to tell Ryu, and Sagat, and Adon; and this one pretty Chinese lady with puffy ribbons in her hair; and this one Japanese sumo tough who wore a perpetual towel around his tree trunk waist; and this one beefy Russian guy who was going on and on about how he wished he could spinning-piledrive a Mercedes Benz, but the "Circuits" forbade him upon pain of disqualification; and so many others now congregated all around. Ken explained to them all that there was a particular scientific horror, which struck before and supposedly murdered a friend of his named Troy. For the first time, Ken had revealed, even to Eliza, that he had not just been afflicted with the cyboplasm that coursed through his veins, but that he had been working, with Troy, to engineer ways in which to harness it so that the energy could be applied to everything from curing diseases to enhancing one's fighting power reserves.

Interestingly, Ken chose not to disclose at this juncture that the one who had attacked Ken's laboratory was none other than Troy himself, Troy who faked his own death in an effort to capitalize on the potent possibilities that cyboplasm had to offer. He only old his old allies, as well as these new acquaintances, that now his Receptionist/Office Manager had been similarly attacked, her body discovered as a pile of preserves—even with a small sign sticking out from the remains which read, "Preserves-Converted Receptionist." The shock at the sight was enough to make Ken faint, or at least wish to do so right then and there in the lab…but he managed to marshal enough resolve to straggle back to his home to deliver this awful address.

At all of this thus far, Ryu looked to E. Honda with the utmost of concern, Guile to Chun Li with a stoic look of determination, Eliza to Julia Jane with a face wracked with anguish.

Eliza thought, feverishly: _Where he was saying he was working all this time…he never told me that the receptionist/office manager was a chick! He always let on that it was a man…_

And one could certainly believe it that nary an evening passed when this crewcut Ken wasn't harboring idle thoughts of The Receptionist…she always decked out in that russet dress…her chestnut tresses hanging down and her umber eyes glowing in the dark of the labs on certain nights.

Now, Ken urged, the intergalactic creatures and monsters which he had faced, just a few years back, they were…invading the Capcommers' honored, humble home as he spoke.

What was worse, Ken warned in addition, was that there was even another threat—the incoming of a troupe of warriors, some connected with and some opposed to a corporate monolith known as the Mishima Zaibatsu.

All of the Street Fighters, as well as the incoming creatures and the individuals associated with the Zaibatsu, were now to be culled in an international tournament, to be held on multiple continents, to decide the fate of the Street Fighters' Earth.

The rules of the tournament were simple: although each match would involve one superalien versus several fighters, only one fighter could take on an alien Target at a time. Any piling on the superalien would result in automatic disqualification for the fighters.

Also, and cruelly so, the fighters had to win each phase of the tournament by complete shutout, so really this was less of a tournament and more of a mass suicide pact for the World Warriors and Tekkeners.

Fortunately for them, the Street Fighters, at least, would be imbued with the same cyboplasmic treatmentas was the buzzcut Ken. Supplied by an organization called Streetfighter Holistic Integral Training, all of the Capcom heroes would be able to emit similar cyboloogies for extra energy—although not all of them would need it to the same extent. Because those from the Namco Zaibatsu were not of the same blood as the Capcommers, they were excluded from this treatment.

Whatever, though. This seeming, supposed Ken Masters gritted his teeth with resolve and prepared his people for the event.

And, to Eliza's eternal dismay, Ken swore aloud that he would get revenge and seek justice for The Receptionist's murder, if it was the last thing he did.

(The Following is a Table of Characters in terms of who is in what Chapter; looking through this might spoil the experience of being in suspense as to when a character appears, and/or the suspense of the whole narrative generally…BUT if you just care about where/when a certain SFer or Tekkener appears in the story (I have all the characters from SSF4 and Tekken 6 here), that's perfectly cool—check away on this list then:)) (Also, some characters might appear in more than one chapter; I have listed here the order of appearance in which characters *actually fight* here, except for small cameos delineated as such)

PART ONE

Chapter One: El Fuerte, Fei Long, Marshall Law

Chapter Two: Ibuki, Sakura, Hwoarang (Cameos by Rolento and Baek Doo San)

Chapter Three: Makoto, Kazuya Mishima, Lee Chaolan, Lili Rochefort, Azuka Kazama, Leo Kliesen, Dan Hibiki

Chapter Four: Eddy Gordo, DeeJay, Blanka, Guile (Sort of)

PART TWO

Chapter Five: Julia Chang, Bob Richards, Dudley, Yoshimitsu, Bryan Fury, Raven

Chapter Six: Roxy, Cody Travers, Hugo Andore Jr.

PART THREE

Chapter Seven: Yun, Yang, Feng Wei, Azazel, Damnd, Sodom, Balrog, Sagat, Roger Jr., Miguel Caballero Rojo, Dhalsim

Chapter Eight: Crimson Viper, Vega, Zafina

Chapter Nine: Lei Wulong, Rufus, Adon, Thunder Hawk (Cameo by Candy)

PART FOUR

Chapter Ten: Lars Alexandersson, Alisa Bosconovitch, Jack-6, Jane, Male Mokujin, Female Mokujin, Sergei Dragunov, Cammy White, Juri Han, M. Bison

Chapter Eleven: Poison, Hugo Andore Sr., Guy, Rose, Ganryu

PART FIVE

Chapter Twelve: Good (Goober) Ryu, Evil Ryu, Akuma, Oni, Gen, Gouken, Heihachi Mishima, Jinpachi Mishima, Wang Jinrei

Chapter Thirteen: Paul Phoenix, Bruce Irvin, Steve Fox, King, Armor King, Craig Marduk, Nina Williams, Anna Williams, Christie Monteiro, Roger's Mother, Abel, Guile (In Stereo) (Cameo by Guile's Wife Julia Jane), Seth, Ogre, Ling Xiaoyu, Jin Kazama, Kunimitsu, E. Honda, Zangief, Hakan, Kuma, Panda, Chun Li, Ken (In Stereo) (Cameo by Eliza)

PART ONE: NORTH AMERICA (OR "STREETCROWN")

CHAPTER ONE: TARGET VERSUS EL FUERTE, FEI LONG, MARSHALL LAW

After meeting in Metro City, where all of the Street Fighters and Tekkeners gathered to strategize generally and decide who was fighting in which event, the primary group convocated towards the vehicle on which they would have their "flight" to the first of the fighting venues: San Francisco, California—also designated as "Streetcrown" by the faceless figures with whom the buzzcut Ken met, alone, at the start of the tournament.

The vehicle in question, by the way, was not at all connected with any skies or space which was friendly.

Instead, the "Cybosphere" in which the fighters was conveyed was an oversized globe, somehow fueled by cyboplasm, which propelled the world warriors through airspace at a blinding sixty thousand miles per hour—all to end up crashing most unceremoniously, just a matter of seconds after leaving Metro City, into the most famous and openly proud Castro District of San Francisco without warning.

In truth, it was the heaviest balling that had ever occurred there, even in this most active community of San Fran.

Emerging from the desolate wreckage of the Cybosphere, among others, were three fighters, somehow not much the worse for wear. The lavish luchador known as El Fuerte, the shirtless shameless Bruce Lee knockoff known as Fei Long, and the shirtless shameless Bruce Lee knockoff known as Marshall Law all stretched themselves out, checking themselves to make sure no cyboshrapnel had embedded itself inside of them, and marveling at the neon sign for the bar before them: THE SOLO STRAIGHT STRIKER.

"Loooooks like we managed to end up at the best place in Frisco for straight chicks!" crowed El Fuerte. "It's great, too, because I could sure use a luscious lady's touch to help me with my next special dish!"

"Your dishes are beyond helping," put in Fei, as he continued with his cantering calisthenics in preparation for the fight soon to be in front of them all. "There's NO WAY you could EVER get me to eat anything you'd put in front of me—even if you yourself didn't cook it."

Fei then set his finger cockily aside of his nose, as he was wont to do, what with his unfailing Dragon-derivative demeanor. The only difference now was that, as he was imbued with cyboenergies like all the other Street Fighters, flecks of cyboogers would emit from his flaring nostrils every so often. It managed to make him even more unbecoming than he was before.

"Well, I'd be willing to try out some of your offerings, Fuerte," Marshall said graciously. The rueful words within then spun out to himself. _God knows I've been so penniless, as always, that I could use a bite to eat given me by anyone._

Yes, as was well known, at least among the Tekkenites, Marshall Law was unable to emerge from any King of Iron Fist with either dollars or dignity. And they all knew that the outcome of this particular fightfest would be no exception for him.

Fei Long just looked at his two sorry ass compatriots with the haughtiest of disdain. "Hhh," he sniffed, "at least it looks like this whole 'Straight Striker' scene might make a good setpiece for my next film…"

"Hssssss…"

And then all three of the warriors turned abruptly.

"Yesssss…if your next film were to be entitled, _GAYS OF DEATH!_"

What was hovering before Fei, Fuerte, and the other restauranteur (as well as the other Bruce Lee reject) was some semblance of a mythical creature, a sort of dragon-demon with a maroon body and maize wings. The most imposing feature of the opponent, physically, was its long, pincerlike tail.

In terms of the psychological threat, its mouth seemingly had no match.

"Yesssss…" it taunted, the dragon-demon bouncing up and down slowly in midair as if pleased with itself like never before, "_Gayssssss of Deathhhhh…_"

"Did you…did you just say, like, _Gays of Death_?" piped up Marshall, at the dragon's three o'clock. "Was that supposed to be, uh, a Bruce Lee reference, like _Game of Death,_ mixed with homophobia?"

"Yeah…I don' wanna fight no homophones!" chimed in El Fuerte, rather inaccurately.

"N…no!" the dragon backpedaled, both aerially and conversationally as it began to recede away a second, "I meant, like, like, _GAZE of Death_, like, a deadly ssssstare…like what would happen if you took off your team captain'sssss glasssssesssss and all…"

The demon knew about the buzzcut Ken and his optical affliction; it still didn't excuse this transparent faux pas.

"Uh, huh, sure," spat Fei Long snidely. "Look, why don't we flip past this offensive falderal so I can make you fall on your face _literally_ this time?!"

Of a sudden: "_FIGHT LOCALE, CHOSEN!_" screamed that annoyingly amped-up Super Capcom Tournament voice out of nowhere, which made at least Fei and Fuerte groan. They both wished simultaneously that the guy had died horribly in the sphere collision.

And then, before the dragon could begin to formulate a response, the doppelganger of the human Dragon launched forward with his storied flaming kick straight up into the air, cyboplasm sparking off in white-blue sheets as well with this—all of which his demon opponent barely dodged by falling abruptly back. As the enemy did so, it continued into an arc, tucking its pincered tail above its head for a cruising charge against all three men.

"YIPE!" yelled Fuerte as the frying pan he just flipped out of his pants almost fumbled in his hands. It was all Fei could do to somersault over his cook compadre, grab his shoulders on the way over, and alley-oop him with a throw out of harm's way. The Bruce dupe glanced over his shoulder to find, to his relative relief (not that he really, really cared anyway), that Marshall had moseyed out of the way of the driving dragon as well.

Now fully energized, Fei Long gave chase to his enemy. Before the dragon-demon could dart around in too many erratic patterns, the pursuing Street Fighter reached it, pounded it hard in the face with a vicious uppercut, then reached forward with a lunging leg to arc the enemy over his head into a downward throw, harshly against the ground, on Fei's other side.

"That should put a gag in your gay-bashing for a bit," the warrior said, skipping around in place like so many other pixilated put-ons of Bruce Lee. He then made the terrible mistake of looking behind him to see where the others were in all this.

Lashing forward once again with his pincer tail: "Why do you care about the gayssssss so much," the dragon-demon hissed viciously as its evil appendage almost pierced straight through the unclothed chest of Fei Long. Only the reactionary reflexes handed down to him from the Dragon-worshipping Capcom programmers saved him from being skewered, and thus giving the approaching El Fuerte a free associative idea about serving most unsavory shish-kebabs for his next platter.

"Do you consssssider yourssssself among their rankssssss?"

Fei Long had nothing against the prevailing community in San Fran at all; he was just sick of this…thing's mouth by this point. And so, the Hong Kong hand-me-down of the legendary master initiated one of his favorite diversionary moves, in which he would, against a human opponent anyway, shoot his foot out and snag the other's ankle, then while uttering an "Over here!" aerial himself over the shoulders of his adversary, to end up on the other end of him.

The Feister managed to adapt this move to his unearthly enemy to an extent, as he fit his foot carefully around the creature's tail, to distract it for a second.

But then, as Fei finagled himself over the head of his opponent, he found himself tumbling helplessly into the repositioned pincer, the point now poised behind the dragon-demon to almost completely impale the feckless film star.

What it all ended up sounding like was, "Over he—I LOSSSSSST!"

And Fuerte and Marshall stood there in shock as the form of Fei Long, unimpaled only thanks to intense conditioning, now bellowing his involuntary cry of defeat and billowing into unconsciousness, crumbling to the ground most crummily.

Marshall looked down at the fainting features of his copycat counterpart, then screwed his own face up in a fit of pique. "You won't K.O. me that readily," he grunted to the dragon-demon. "WHAWWW!"

"Oh, ssssso now we have the sssssound effects of Brussssse Lee from this one," said the Tekkener's enemy derisively. The airborne beast hovered menacingly over his new opponent. "Just ssssso you know, I don't do knockouts, you knockoff.

"I jussssst dessssstroy…"

And with that, the dragon dashed for the Dragon dupe in the same tail-over-top aerial zoom that he had perpetrated minutes before. Marshall responded by falling back abruptly and flattening against the ground in an impromptu supine position. He leapt up an instant later, giving due chase to his enemy. Indeed, before the dragon-demon could even right itself around to face his foe, the latter had gone in furiously with a flurry of five or six jabs, pummeling the midsection of the monster with at least a modicum of authority.

"You're…not going to keep me from the end of this tournament!" Marshall spat, in desperation, as he then proceeded to a mid-to-high-to-low kick trio succession against his opponent—which further battered the demon without any resistance or response. "Forest has gotten in trouble with the Law again…unf…ugh…"

It was all Marshall could do to declare the reasons behind his resolve as he sustained damage from the dragon-devil before him, in the form of the enemy stinging again and again with its pincer-tail. Before he knew it, the Lawman was down to his last sliver of life.

"…Mrs. Law, that is! Although I forgave him for giving that lunch money to the poor…his mother sure hasn't! He'd give a billion away, if he had it…"

Marshall was talking it out as he was at the moment in order to keep himself focused, and hopefully to distract his adversary at least through annoyance if but for nothing else. If only he was cybo-enhanced as well…but of course he couldn't be, as everyone knew that ONLY a Street Fighter could overcome the cybogauntlet to become plasmically empowered, as it had been related in storied backgrounds of yore. Marshall was very much Tekken-ically disqualified from this, as was everyone else who competed with him before in his own universe.

It wasn't working, as no creature was more irritating than this dragon-demon. When Marshall went in to align himself with his back to the enemy, he succeeded in landing one back elbow…

…but upon his attempt at the second one, the maroon monster leaned its head in and bit the Lawful one hard on the back of the neck. "WHAAOUGHWHAW…" was all Marshall could somewhat utter as his form fell to the ground in defeat.

"You and all thessssse frivolousssss, unmanly thingsssss to talk about…perhapsssss you need to…come out, like your ripoff friend…"

The beastly opponent then hovered directly over the man he just downed. "Heh, heh, heh…I eat you pathetic Kung-Fucks for breakfassssst…"

"It was Wing Chun and Jeet Kune Do, not Kung Fu that the Master did, you flying freak!"

At this the dragon-demon arched its stubby stygian neck. Standing before him was the last of the warriors he had to wear out. This last one, this…masked Mexican moron, the monster measured, would score his only point this evening in that correction regarding Bruce Lee's martial specialties.

"Well…" he began, hovering casually up one more time, before his determined last dive for the evening. "If it isssssn't El Blazzzzze. With emphasis on the 'ZZZZZ,' for how exciting you really are."

Fuerte fumed fervently at this miscalling. "I am NOT that uninspired Virtual Fumbler fool!" he shouted, his mind reeling for an instant at how many times he had been mistaken for that wayward loser luchador. He raised and shook his saucepan vigorously. "I am going to someday mash him into the ground, that midget _maricon!_..."

"Oh, NOW who's the ignorant, insensitive one?"

The somewhat super crazy Street Fighter decided by this point, like anyone else reasonable by this juncture, that he'd had enough of this hovering horror. "I'm not going to _send_ you out for ingredients…amigo…" he muttered under his breath.

Then he suddenly sprang forward, catching the dragon-demon off-guard with a sudden dropkick. "I'm going to _grind_ you into them!"

While his opponent was off-balance, then, El Fuerte invited himself into range to actually pick up and power-bomb the monster hard into the ground.

At the blow and the throw, the dragon hunkered back seconds later, shaken hard from this abuse as well as from that of the other two who had dealt him in the last several minutes. By now the thing was certainly much more bark than bite, much more hiss than hurt.

It still had it in itself, though, to lash out once more with the tail, thrusting its pincer to pierce through the shoulder of El Fuerte as the other approached.

"GAAHHH!" shouted the luchador as the hit and the pain registered, he now the one to stagger back in agony.

An instant later the two circled one another, wearily and warily.

"Thisssss isssss asssss far asssss you're going to go…El Blasssssé."

_That's it!_

At hearing the new variation on the old insult—this "El Blasé" now—Fuerte decided that he really couldn't take any more. He decided, what the hell—if he was given the name, he might as well play the video game…

He threw his head back and clapped his hands to his temples, as if having a massive hernia-cum-stroke-cum-coronary.

"START…RUNNING…

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWW!"

And with the last word of this opening jeer of his parallel, Virtual-verse twin, El Fuerte did his patented frenzied spaz charge, straight at the dragon-demon. "JAAAAA! JAAAAA!" the Mexican madman screamed as his frenetic feet went _chepchepchepchepchepchep._

And before the damaged demon could do anything, his opponent reached him and enacted a full body splash on it, pinning it to the ground. Fuerte then propped himself up in a flash, then hoisted the demon up as well, only to configure it into a hold that would make it hurt as much as possible as it would soon lie on the ground again, the recipient of the business end of a brutal brain-buster.

Finally, for the coup de grace…the frying pan, once again.

(PANG!, PANG!, PANG! BWAMA, BWAMA, BWAMA)

Not only was the dragon-demon done in by the blows from the instrument itself—the fact that Fuerte's fryer was cyboplasmic, from his own treatment by the Streetfighter Holistic Integral Training program, also known by its initials as Ess Aitch Eye Tee, had sealed the monster's fate in full.

"Now, huhhh, hhhuh," the lusty luchador had said, a bit out of breath as he stood over his trounced foe—whom he soon hoped would become his new source of foie gras, "what was _your_ name, you piddling _payaso,_ for you to fancy yourself all special?"

The demon could not speak for about a full minute. It just looked up at what to the monster was an unlikely victor in full disbelief.

Then: "Rrr…Rrr…Rea-mer."

"_Cómo?_" Fuerte queried impatiently.

It cleared its gore-cluttered throat, to warble it out once more. "Reamer," it repeated at last a moment later. "Red Reamer, ak…skhly."

El Fuerte couldn't believe it. Red…Reamer? Like, like the _Red Arremer_, like the hovering, menacing red devil demon, from that…_Ghosts n' Gazpachos_, or whatever it was called?

"And you callin' _us_ cheap knockoffs?!" he screamed incredulously, as he began to drag the dragon over his shoulder, towards the door of the establishment before him. He then looked over to the downed forms of Fei and Marshall, then shrugged. Surely those two would be in better hands, even from strangers off the street…in this neighborhood, from the way they were talking the whole time.

Fuerte then sniffed and continued on his way to the door, with this…Reamer ripoff readily in tow. "Man! They better let me guest-grill for this evening…I got a HUGE crock'a crap on me, that I jus' _gotta_ cook!"

CHAPTER TWO: TARGET VERSUS IBUKI, SAKURA, HWOARANG (WITH OTHER SPECIAL GUESTS)

If there were any chance that she would have, to get the man she needed, she thought…it would have to be now.

Before yet another slow, solitary semester once again set in.

"Here we are, at the Straight, Solo Striker!" she exclaimed to herself softly. (She knew that she got the ordering of the words in the name slightly off…but she wanted to stress the "Straight" part, as it was definitely a dude she was out for around here).

She leapt directly upward into the air to give her breathless words a bit more of a boost. This, of course, attracted the attention of everyone inside the bar/restaurant—even the hooded Ewoklike creatures who were overly occupied with the pinball machines in the grimy corners.

"With lots of eligible guys and a giddy little ninja girl. That's right, San Francisco, on leave from the kunoichi academy once again…

"…it's none other than the ever-lovin' Ibuki: on the scene…"

A hand then alighted on the khaki assassin's shoulder, startling her a bit.

"The dating scene, once again, I take it!" exclaimed the other female Fighter who just set in. The sailor outfit on this one made her out to be underage yet oddly alluring all at once.

"Oh, Sakura," Ibuki started, blushing a tiny bit, "you just have to deliver on that promise you made to me, at the last tournament! Remember, in the rival match…"

"Yes, yes, of course." The eponymous Cherry Blossom that was Sakura carefully smoothed the hair above her white headband. "And, true to my word, I have found the perfect guy for you!"

A sigh of relief from the ninja girl at this.

"In fact," Sakura continued as she whipped out a small piece of paper, with the name of the one she found for her friend, "I would say that this guy is probably not only the best bet for you tonight…he's probably the only one, judging from what I'm seeing around here." She punctuated these words by scanning the place, turning up her nose at the straight yet subhuman offerings in the establishment. "I don't know if any of these other…guys, if you could call them that…are really your type."

"Well, I'm not going to be told!" said the other, arching her head defiantly as she checked the joint out for herself once more. She then stood ramrod straight, a screwed-up look of determination in her eyes. "Ibuki on the _scene!_"

"All, alright," the Cherry Blossom said calmingly, placing a sure hand on the kunoichi's shoulder. "You regular, ah…scene stealer. Let's just…have a drink to settle our nerves a second. I can tell you more about your guy at the bar."

So it was minutes later that Ibuki learned the identity of this supposed dashing ladykiller.

"His name is, let's see…it's…Bertrand Asher," Sakura began, smoothing out the crinkled paper that was heretofore in her micro-, er, picoskirt. "From what I hear, he's very successful. …With a name like that, you gotta figure he pulls in a lot of G's."

_Which is what I wish ol' Dan could begin to pull in, down at his dojo,_ the Blossom mused to herself internally.

All the other warrior could do was ogle the name scrawled on the scrap of paper as she dreamed of what he would look like. When she met him, would be he dressed in shiny dapper black, with a midnight blue-slicked mane atop his squared off cranium to match? Would he be an olive-skinned exotic Israeli soldier of fortune?

Could he be this…peach-haired…Korean guy taking his liberty to stroll right over to the bar, without any seeming hint of inhibition?

Ibuki looked deep into the eyes of the spry fellow who just alighted on her right. His face seemed smooth and strong…with intense, piercing eyes…

…then, when the Tekkenite tool spoke, any idea that this could possibly be Bertrand Asher was utterly and irretrievably dashed.

"Hey, ahh," he started, the words spilling out with an optimal amount of boorishness, "you, uh… a ninja?"

Ibuki glanced at the tannish fabric of her sleeve a second, then just stared at the interloper. _Doesn't it look like I'm an effing ninja?!_ flashed across her mind, and she wished to fire the inkling through the idiot's brain with the business end of one of her kunai blades.

Instead, though: "Umm…yes." She then smiled sheepishly, now letting her generally, predominantly easygoing demeanor take the fore once again. "Straight out of the itchy academy!"

Hwoarang just looked at her, with complete brash blankness.

"Kuno…kunoichi, I mean, heh…with the 'itchy' and all."

"Oh!" the Korean kook chuffed, getting it now. A beat. Then: "You know, yeah…I gotta imagine, I've always thought that ninja school was like strict as all hell."

This was met by a serene nod from Ibuki. Sakura just looked on and smiled. Perhaps the khaki Casanovette here would have some options other than this Asher, after all.

"And, like, I can totally relate to strictness of things, as like every other week I'm being conscripted into the Korean army again…it's like all I can do to get away to joining tourneys and such!"

"I know!" Ibuki looked down at her drink a second and shook her head lightly. "They just want you to follow all these terribly harsh rules in our societies and such. How wrong."

"No, no—it's Hwoarang."

"What?"

"Hwoa—Whaw…rang," the Tekkenite corrected Ibuki carefully, sounding it out to make sure she got it. "You Capcommers have like the worst sense of pronunciation."

He smiled weakly, then put his hand to the back of his neck at seeing Ibuki somewhat sneer at this, realizing that things with girls were going south for him now, as they always did.

Hwoarang always had an uphill battle anyway, given that obsessions with other men such as Jin Kazama made him wonder sometimes as to whether there was an "outing" he needed to undertake—one that didn't involve the rigorous river-spanning and mountain-climbing that Master Baek always made him do a few times a week. He figured that Frisco and its notable demographic might help grant him insight on this…in a sense, then, participating in this tourney was beneficial for him on more than one front.

The Taekwondo toughy looked idly upward a second, to figure what his next line should be with these two fine ladies…and then, he saw it.

A purple humanoid figure with the most appalling simian face was hanging from the ceiling, directly over the heads of Sakura and Ibuki, by a peculiar silverish device on one of his hands. Apparently just about no one saw the guy…(although Hwoarang then took note that some of the Ewokish little people, hunched near the pinball table on the opposite corner, pointed up and snickered a bit—but they didn't bother to do anything beyond that in the way of notifying or warning anyone.

"Ninja Girl, uh…Sailor Buruma…look out!"

And with that, Hwoarang waved Ibuki and Sakura over quickly, pointing with the other hand frantically upward. The girls flicked a glance upward and duly dodged just before the purple person pounced on down.

The heretofore disaffected hipsterish crowd was now set to panicking as they all beheld the fuchsia freak that seemed a potent threat. Sakura turned to the mass and reassured them. "We'll take care of this!" And with a punctuating cybo-enhanced junior hadouken, the good San Franciscans calmed a bit.

"_Your destiny will be determined here!"_ cried a lame, really nerdy voice from some loudspeaker nearby. Apparently while Fuerte and Company just outside were "privileged" enough to get the huffy Super announcer, the girls and the 'rangster here were stuck with the boring Regular one, from the original Fourth Street Fighting tournament.

The thistle-hued terror ignored this insipid announcing voice. "No one here is safe from me," the monster said, clenching the silvery fist that seemed to flex very fluidly…a little too fluidly…

"Look, mister," Ibuki snapped, stepping forward, "I don't know who you are, but…"

"Oh don't you recognize me…don't you notice your…date to the ball, my dear Ibuki?"

This was met with only a look of complete bewilderment on the saucy student's part.

"Don't you realize that you are now making the honored acquaintance of none other than Bertrand Asher…better known to all in this happenin' hotspot as _BASHER?!_"

_Are you fucking kidding me,_ Sakura wanted to blurt out. Now it was her turn, between herself and her girlfriend, to be crass.

"We don't care what you go by, you apefaced asshole!" And with this statement, Hwoarang rushed toward the enemy, letting fly with a flurry of kicks that put the purple punkass on the immediate defensive. Before Basher could do anything, the kickass Korean followed up with a stamping motion to the monster's right foot, then a sideways chop that looked mysteriously like an effeminate bitch slap.

Perhaps the Taekwondoer would have to undertake that special "outing" after all.

Before Hwoarang could deliver his other flavors of flooring fools, Basher gathered up his resolve and let fly with a steely right fist that clocked the Korean right across the jaw. The other countered by grabbing at the mauve menace, then throwing him a foot aside, only to then spin the other way and catch his opponent unawares with a hook kick to the face. The Tekkener then followed with an axe kick that knocked the Basher onto his back.

Breathing heavily for a few moments, then slapping his hands together with satisfaction, Hwoarang looked proudly at the two warrior women whom he must have just now undoubtedly impressed. He certainly had some catching up to do with his sexuality, he thought whimsically as he walked over, and this pair seemed like great candidates to get himself started…

"LOOK OUT!"

…But the Tekkenite couldn't turn in time, couldn't dart away in time before the once-more-erect Basher connected with a careening kick to the face.

What certainly didn't hurt the violent violet varmint here was the fact that he could use his silver fist as a sort of grappling hook, to swing himself all around the bar. With this ability, he managed to get the airtime and airspace he needed to ambush the now-supine Tekken Taekwondo master.

Basher then landed just feet away from the girls. "People are known notoriously to swing in this town," he said, with some bravado, "but no one does it around here like I do."

"I'll show you 'swing.'"

Sakura connected with an aggressive leaping front knee just as her opponent fully righted himself. She then hopped over him, grabbing his shoulders as she passed above, then pushed herself off of him with both her feet, sending him in the other direction and floorward, just as she went forward.

The ebullient schoolgirl was all but her perennially cheerful self at this point. "I am…anything but pleased to meet you, Mr. Asher…Basher…whatever the eff," she said. And with that, she charged forward once again, letting fly with one of her favorite moves—the wheeling front kick—again as her enemy reached his feet. Cyboenergies issued in spirals as the girl's leg whirled through the air.

Shooting his grappler straight at the bar nearby, though, the Basher zoomed himself away, managing to avoid the assault, if narrowly. The Blossom ended up throwing her foot uselessly in the space he once occupied, then turned to face His Crafty Cockiness once again.

"I'll have to say, baby, I'm gonna miss it," was all he said to her.

"Miss what?"

[SSSSSHHHHH-KRACK]

As Sakura sunk to the ground after receiving Basher's detaching, extending/retracting fist full in the face: "I'm gonna miss watching your tight bloomer shorts show when you kick…"

…And then Basher took the trouble to grapple to the wall opposite the bar, performing the same swooping shinbash on Sakura that he had rendered unto Hwoarang minutes ago.

"…'specially with that wheeling one you got there."

He reached his way over to the far end of the bar (which wasn't that far as the whole Straight Striker was about the size of a freaking lower-middle-class rec room), then he carefully fit his fist back into its chamber, completely satisfied.

"MISTER BERTRAM!"

The Basher whirled around to encounter the khaki kunoichi waiting just four or five feet away.

"That's BERTRAND to you, my little pony…tail," the wisteria wanker chided, cocking his silvery fist back again to strike as he, and various others straight and otherwise in the bar, continued to marvel at the impossible length of Ibuki's long, long, long, long, long, long shock of midnight hair tied back.

"Well, really…" the other started, flipping abruptly over her enemy with impossible speed and leaving him (and, again, the others in the establishment) to gander only at a quickly-fading outline of herself where she once stood), "they're really like 'foal-tails' or something, as I have like a bunch of baby ponytails…but what the hell?"

Before Basher could turn around fully, Ibuki had already grabbed him and flipped him hard over her shoulder. This was the throw that had her thrust her rump out as she executed it, which attracted much attention, applause, and raucous male approval. And it was the first time this evening that such a reaction occurred, so Ibuki knew exactly why. _Yes, this really _must_ be the one straight bar in Frisco,_ she thought fleetingly.

Ibuki wanted to catch her breath for a second, so she talked it out with her foe, to keep him at bay. "I was told…told that you maybe were…kind of financially successful, Mister Asher."

"At the end of the day…all of the change that comes from the pinball machines around here…is mine."

Now motivated even more to resume her attack, the kunoichi darted up to the Basher with celerity, yet also with care, as she knew of this murderous moron's tricks. And sure enough, the boomerangy fist lashed out just as she reached him—but no one in the Shooter tonight had reflexes like Ibuki.

Like lightning she dodged the projectile and in the same breath she whipped out one of her infamous kunai blades. In another trice she lashed back at the Bash, slashing harshly against his chest as she did so. Cyboloogies spurted forth from the weapon as well, to deal the enemy exponentially more damage. This all caused the man to reel in agony, so she took it upon herself to lay down a few more lacerations while she could.  
[SLASH BWAMA]"This is for that…Harangue guy, who was hitting on me a few minutes before you got here! He was kind of an effing idiot, but I'd rather deal with him than you!

[SLASH BWAMA] "And this is for Saks Fifth Avenue!"

She had her cute little names for everyone, and the Cherry Blossom was certainly no exception. (Although she really didn't know what that Tekkenite's was, and really thought he said "Harangue").

But then, as she stood there, bouncing on her toes and thinking of her defeated allies, she found herself falling hindquarters over head as Basher had thrust his magenta mass out to sweep her. He then attempted to roll over for a pin (not that pinfalls were necessary here…this context was far deadlier than any sorts entertainment), but Ibuki rolled away in a huff.

"Sorry, Bertram, but you'll have to get a few more drinks in me first…actually, you could drain San Fran dry through my throat and it still wouldn't be enough…not with you."

"It's BERTRAND!"

Now Ibuki had her enemy swinging wildly, or rather thrusting out wildly, with his fist projectile. While the idea of heated thrusting might appeal to most inhabitants of a town as amorous as San Francisco, this wasn't the right time, place, or partner for the beleaguered ninja girl. She knew that she was getting under his amethyst armor, though—and she was sure that the collective efforts between herself and her impromptu teammates had done their damage on her adversary, so she kept on.

"How 'bout I just…umm…mistakenly call you 'Bastard' instead of your 'real'…real stupid codename, would that work?!"

Ibuki then waited for the inevitable, psychotically-quick latching to the ceiling and swinging-over-to-her-position that the Basher liked to perpetrate. She stood her ground and waited for it.

"You fawn-fabricked fuckeress," hissed Basher as he began his swing over. "How would you like it if I called you 'Kabuki'…or 'A Pooky'…"

But the girl refused to be riled, merely sidestepping (as a crewcut Ken never could, a few years back in this same bar) and throwing a few fast leaping front kicks at the Basher's back as he finished out his suspended grapple-grope. The resulting impact that the kunoichi brought on left her target tumbling into the corner, trounced and officially down for the count.

"The name, you lavender loser…" she said, relieving herself of her silk mouthguard for the first time since she engaged the Basher in battle, "…is Ibuki."

She lobbed a kunai over her shoulder, leaving the knife to clatter near his unconscious form like a killer's calling card. Then she threw one last, disdainful look in his direction.

"On the motherfuckin' SCENE."

The kunoichi stretched, took a deep breath. This whole search for the right one was even more demanding than the itchy academy. She wanted to return to that virtual prison even more than a wayward Metro City hero wanted to go back to his literal correctional counterpart, after winning another streetfighting tournament in another Capcommish reality.

It was only instants later that Ibuki noticed a man in a mavericklike military uniform and accompanying beret—whom heretofore she would not have entirely minded, given the general scope of her heart's search—the ostensible soldier now taking an olive staff to the inert form of the overwhelmed orchid form on the ground.

"Now, really," she started, extending a warding hand to the solider, "It's not really necessary…I already…"

"You'll speak when spoken to, Private!"

The man barely looked over his shoulder as he said it, then he commenced back to beating the creature down, seemingly out of the sheer joy of it. He went from regular strikes to spin-strikes with his cane, then the ninja girl could swear that he whipped out a pineapple grenade, which as far as she was concerned was her cue.

_You sure do get some interesting types in this city,_ Ibuki thought to herself, as she started hurrying the hell out of there a bit more, _though for some reason I think I may be seeing that man again someday._ (This all occurred, by the way, before the infamous "Cross" tournaments between the Capcomverse and the Namcoverse).

Ibuki kept on, in any case, now not even bothering to give a second look to the somewhat elderly man in the taupe suit and matching hat who was apparently…climbing up on the chest of that Harangue fellow, then kicking him in the face. The older one then punched, then spin-punched the peach-haired punk, followed by a downward chop that sliced into the student's shin and brought his face down to his feet.

"But, Master, I didn't need any more training before this contest…!"

It was enough for one night. Ibuki went over to Sakura, who had been nursing a few screwdrivers in her short term convalescence, and a minute or two later the girls were off.

The Ewoks were playing pinball. Atticus was reading the paper.

CHAPTER THREE: FIRST PACK OF 'LUDES (INTERLUDES, THAT IS)

It was a few hours later, and there were a couple of Tekkenites…as well as one somewhat generically-uninspired, yet also one quirkily-memorable, Street Fighter…who had to get ready for the next battle.

And, of course, there were a few individuals for whom the last phrase of the preceding paragraph was of the utmost paramount importance.

"Look, Steve…" said Clint to his acquaintance, as the former adjusted his super-soldier's shield, strengthened infinitely with vibranium and bearing the red, white, and blue of what was arguably the most powerful nation of Streetcrown (I mean, really: what else is there…Canada?!) "Look. I'm just saying, you have to deliver the line with grit. With toughness. Like you're trying to…rid your neighborhood of pesky Laotians, or something."

"Clint, I still don't approve—most people didn't approve—of your highly, adversely prejudicial behavior toward at least some of those people. And I mean on the set of the film, not in the story of the movie itself. And they were Hmong, by the way; not just any good, hardworking Laotians."

By now, one should know that the Clint that Steve Rogers was addressing was not Barton, not the Hawkeye who was kind of competently represented in the Marvel superteam feature last year…but rather a much more visible American movie icon.

Steve ran a gentle hand over the star in the center of his shield. "The line, I believe, should be said with a deliberate flair. With a smoothness that suggests that professionalism of a grand fighting tournament."

"_AND IIIIII THINK THAT YOU BOTH SHOULD STAND ASIDE AND LET ME DO ALL THE ANNOUNCING, BEFORE I STRIKE YOU DOWN!"_

"Please, Lord…allow us to settle this between ourselves."

But, not unlike the irrepressible Ibuki, God didn't like being told. Not by any mortal, human or super-so.

As everyone knows, it was Captain America who served as the announcer for The King of Iron Fist Tournament 5, with his crooning superhero pipes, and it was Clint Eastwood who lent his throaty inflection to the Darkly Resurrected iteration of it. None other than the Almighty, with his booming, echoey voice, was the man behind the "Get Ready" utterance of Iron Fist 6.

And just as the One On High despised the use of the word "Resurrection" in connection with some piddling fighting tourney, so too did basically everyone on the planet despise his announcing style. It was too grandiose, too…it was just over and above for the Tournament, too much so.

But no one, of course, had the guts to tell him. Not even Clint Eastwood.

Not yet, anyway. Every mortal man had his limits with something that bothered him.

At any rate, it was now incumbent upon Mr. Rogers to make the statement, for the impending match to come.

"GEHHHET REHHEADY FOR THE NEHHEHEXT BATTLE," the most American of Captains murmured, in his dulcet MC, and DC-Universe-defying tones. Of course, the CHAWWW of the impact sound effect accompanying the superhero's statement, along with the images of the Target and its Capcom/Namco opponents on the closed circuit video screens accessible to all announcers.

"Hmmph," was all Clint could grunt in response; it was uncertain as to whether this was an utterance of approval or disgust at Steve's delivery, or whether it was just the sound of the gruff codger's regular breathing anymore.

"_I COULD DO BETTER,_" boomed God in utter contempt.

The third of the matches between the extraterrestrial threats, the members of the Tektalitarian Regime, and those of the Capcommune occurred over the course of an entire neighborhood in the quieter parts of San Francisco. On the whole, the matchup was mostly unremarkable, although there were some points worthy of mention. For some reason, the Target in this instance was privileged enough to make his opponents work for it in order to even reach the suburban garage in which he was holed up. As Tektoughs Lee Chaolan and Kazuya Mishima coursed along the tricky walkways set back against the blazing cityscape, Streetfighter Makoto did all she could to keep up, as relatively clumsy as she was.

"Hurry, you insignificant…_student,_" Kazuya spat behind him, not even bothering to look back. "This little scrap means hardly anything to me…I have more…capital ventures which I seek to undertake after this."

Lee didn't bother to look behind him either as Makoto did all she could, while barefoot, to jump from ledge to ledge in pursuit. All the dapper chap bothered to do was cast a sly glance sideways and give a beckoning yet slithering forefinger to the girl, to prompt her along.

_I got a finger of my own for ya, pretty boy,_ thought the ambitious dojo duenna as she hurried.

By the time the trio reached the Target, though (not the megastore, mind you), the two men of the group were struggling to keep their guard up, and to keep from cracking up.

At the sight of their foe, as well as his name and his catchphrase.

"Your bah…hih, hih, hih! Your bah…your bah…hih, hih!" was all Kazuya could manage to get out as he couldn't keep from doubling over while laughing his Mishima rear off. Lee was a man of very few words, in any language—and especially in English—but he mocked the enemy now in his best Western tongue:

"I ham Androboy the Huntah…and mine BOX is biggerah than my bite!"

"He said his…his…his BOX, his bah…his bah, his bah...baahhhaaahaha!" said Kazuya again, laughing at a phrase not only uttered to him and his allies just now, but also featured in the caption of one of the screen captures in the advertisement for the alleged Ken's original 2010 outer space adventure in the Capcomverse. One could unearth this easily through a search for images in the informational ether.

Androboy himself was nonplussed at this ridicule, and unshaken as well. He threw a hand up towards the ceiling, expectantly awaiting his cascading cubical cohorts. "Well, you don't impress me, you Namco numbskulls and Capcom calamity. I mean, like, take you, the Great Kazoo…ya, as you're called, with the studded Michael Jackson gloves of death…what are you, like, an anime asylee, with that pointy ass slick black hair? Is this supposed to be 'Androboy versus Astroboy' or something?

"And you, Master Chaolan…are we Lee, this evening, or are you enmeshed in the persona of your shrinking VIOLET at present?

"And you, too," the Target continued, pointed with one of his metallic oversized hands at Makoto, "the Karate Kiki…or Kirk, I can't tell really…I'd say that between you and me, you're really the one who's 'Andro,' if you know what I mean."

"_I_ am a _woman,_ AndroBOY," cried Makoto vindictively—overstating her age a bit through her declaration of womanhood—as she just leapt off the roof of a nearby private home. For once, she didn't have to contend with displaced, clattering shingles while traversing the top of a house. "Which is more than I can say about someone who comes all the way from the cosmic void to shack up in a family's garage. Miss the effects of home, do we?"

With this, the Bolt of Fighting Spirit (as Capcomian instructional treatises would say about her) executed a dash or two the enemy's way…

…only to have a giant, aforementioned box careen straight toward her head, which she ducked duly and just in time.

Makoto lay a second unmoving as she assessed that nothing was injured in her quick, almost quicktime-event-speed dodge (and, believe this author, she hated those kinds of events like any organism in any universe). Meanwhile, Kazuya casually let fly with one of his pansyistic lazy-looking-yet-signaturely-powerful spinaround jump kicks, which summarily took the antagonizing Boy off his feet. Just as he pounded down into his foe with his gloved fist, Lee shoved him out of the way.

"Step 'side, stepbrotha," he managed in his best attempt, again, at a Western inflection.

It wasn't as if Chaolan required his mouth at this point anyway, when his moves otherwise sufficed. Five or six quick kicks to the midsection of Androboy, just as the latter was getting up, was enough to put him back down. The sometimes Violet then bothered to help the Boy to his knees again, only to align himself next to the enemy's head, hold it down with one leg, then drive his other foot so that the foe's cranium crashed back into the floor.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering about the regularly-falling boxes all over this level, as was encountered in the alleged Ken's 2010 adventure…Makoto was relegated implicitly to the systematic smashing of these, with bare hands and feet of course, as if it were an unending, or at least protracted, Street Fighter's bonus stage.

But then she reached her absolute breaking point (as if she couldn't be any more PO'ed than she ordinarily was). "GET READY!" she shouted, to the usual testosteroney tune of tomboy that she touted, as she ever-so-slowly inched her way across the garage. (She was one of the slowest SFers, after all).

Androboy then found the strength to push past the Tekkenites and chuck one more box the girl's way, but she easily kata-chopped the projectile to pieces. Then she dashed forward with unpredictable speed and unexpectedly dashed a fist down to the ground, causing no boxes from above to issue, but nonetheless emitting a small cyboplasmic eruption from the floor that startled the Target just enough for Makoto to gain an opening and grab him.

Thereafter Makoto thrust another open hand up into the air, and with one more unwomanly grunt she palmed Androboy harshly into the ground.

When the Boy failed to get up this last time, and the ceiling above settled for good, the three knew they were done.

"Alright! Alliance is off, we're quits," said Kazuya, dismissively waving one of his gloved hands in the general direction of the other two warriors while he set off to pursue his more important ventures.

"Uhh…Kazuya," Makoto began, starting off after the miserable Mishima, frustrated that with her molassal gait she couldn't keep up with wildebeests in an African solar eclipse, "…Kazuya…

He just kept walking along the perimeter of the garage, looking for a way down to the street. Lee just looked on, mildly amused.

"HEY! GREAT KAZOO!"

At this Kazuya shot a laserlike glance at the Street Fighter.

"Ya know one of those BOXES you two left me to smash up back here?!" Makoto cried, pointing at the remains of the crushed cubes all around."

"Yeah?!"

"One of them…was kind of…ahh…"

A pause, as she withstood the monster of a man's steely gaze.

Then she finished the thought.

"…Pandora."  
She heard Kazuya going on and on about that damned thing the whole way over, so she knew it was critical to him. And she wasn't bluffing, either; all those blue-white swirls circulating around the place, Kazuya now realized dimly, weren't exactly cyboloogy signatures.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

Lee found himself impressed with his stepbrother's newfound means of getting down to street level, as the madman had thrown himself onto the neighboring shingles in despair and slid down them, to plummet to the ground, just as Makoto had once so narrowly avoided on one busy yet rueful afternoon. "EX-SUR-LENT," was all the towheaded Tekkener could say (as usual) to this.

And so concluded the intense engagement between more than one individual who could be called "Andro."

But, as would be seen through a certain would-be-world-dominator's newest plan, to be revealed on continents to come, the tournament would not see the last incidence of gender indeterminacy. Nooooo, no...the melodrama regarding the gender identity of two key institutional, prostitutional characters remained a pivotal inquiry, and one which needed to be resolved within the coming bouts.

Elsewhere, in an oft-occupied tight space in the most jumping reaches of San Francisco…

_ Dear Daddy Rochefort,_

_ I never thought that in my extracurricular exploit of tournament fighting, I would ever meet the man of my dreams, or a man who could ever begin to approach you in your overwhelming greatness._

_ There are still no such men on the reality I am in now, nor in our native Namcoverse, in which any male could equal you…but I have found one who now nonetheless lays claim to a significant segment of my precious heart._

_ I met him shortly after our…"Cybosphere" crashed hard into a brick wall at the end of an alleyway in Castro. I was dazed and woozy, and I noticed too that my default outfit, which is like a billowing fabric-y shortcake without the strawberries, was all sooty and smudgy. I'm sure that my makeup with running with tears, and I was splayed on the floor of the sphere to boot, my fine flaxen mane with so many strands at split ends…but then HE helped me up._

_ He was wearing this bold, intrepid martial arts uniform, kind of, but with the sleeves cut off. He had wild hair, and an irresistible glint in his eye that I couldn't escape. The man told me that he had been a Street Fighter for a very long time, and he impressed me right then and there, demonstrating with a cyboplasmically-enhanced shoryuken that set my heart to sprinting. Of all the fighters, he said with sure confidence, he was the one who would bring justice to this tournament. _

_ Father, I know that the decision I made will not sit well with you, nor with others in our family, your associates, and many others, in the Namcoverse and beyond, who know me. However, I pursued the following route in order to deliver unto myself an optimal level of bliss, which you have always wanted for me._

_ I married this incredible man because I believe that he has the same quantum of suaveness that I myself possess, in fighting style and everyday demeanor._

_ I married him because he, too, Daddy, is obsessed with his own father—even though his papa passed away some time ago._

_And I married him, because—like me—he is totes enamored with PINK!_

_(Not the vocalist, Daddy, though I did catch him humming the "Get Up and Try, and Try" song an hour ago). You KNOW how my bedroom at home is a veritable tribute to everything cuddly, and also everything carnation._

_ Anyway, Daddy, his name is Dan—Daniel Hibiki. He runs a dojo in the Capcomverse, and I plan to spend a significant amount of time there in the near future._

_ So you know all the garish details…we had the ceremony in this well-known wind tunnel on the outskirts of Castro, in San Fran. It was perfect, because it was spray-painted reddish-PINK, which Danny and I both loved. For some reason, there were these…stereo speakers, on the fringes of the tunnel, belting out some weird beboppy kind of music, like an ever trippier rendition of some bizarre music they play in portions of 1970s children's educational programs…"Boo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Bee Doo Bee Doo Doo Doo Bop" and the like. It kind of made me feel like I was in outer space! (Well, I have technically BEEN in outer space, with that space station arena in Iron Fist…but this was so much more surreal than that, no lie). _

_ But anyway, as my incredible luck would have it, I had the spare costume that looks like a bridal veil with the dainty silk underoos…and I know you wouldn't have approved, but hell it was Frisco!—I wore that, Daddy, for the ceremony. The officiator was none other than my begrudging fighting partner of late, Asuka Kazama. …I have to tell you, too, Daddy, I like Asuka, the way she looks, in the Capcomverse. More so than in the Namcoverse, as she has these warmer, softer, flusher features, whereas in Tekkenland she looks all bland and pale and shit._

_ Anyway…sorry, getting off track. So there we were, in the center of the tunnel, and Asuka was doing the whole, "If anyone has any objections" line…and then HE walked in. That little feces face; I hate him._

_ Dan looked over, and I think for a second that he actually became stiff, in a certain unmentionable area. He told me before, for sure, that he's only into girls (not that guys into guys or girls into girls is anything problematic, of course, of course, of course), but that he thought our little interloper was a runaway Bridget Fonda impersonator, or maybe even Fonda herself (haven't seen her in movies in some time, so I found his sentiment plausible)._

_ To make a long story a smidgen of a bit shorter, I said to the fool, "LOOK, Leo, I don't like you in that way. I never did. You can bring those roses to your mother's grave,"—he had a whole bunch of them with him, which I almost chopped out of his hands—"but I'm not impressed."_

_ Leo was supposedly slated for another event in the tourney, Father, but because his name sounds like 676765767567556567 other people from Tekkenland, like Lee and Lei and all (heck, we could almost make out our own renegade Metal Gear Solid faction with all the "L plus vowel sound" warrior names)—Leo wasn't missed at all._

_ He said nothing, in any case, but just drew Dan in with one arm, then with the other he punched up into my beloved's face, then down at the midsection, and then in the face again! Because my lover wouldn't think that anyone could be such a fragment of fecal matter, he didn't see it coming._

_ Thankfully, for once, it seemed, Asuka was on the same page as me. Without a word herself, she yanked Leo off his feet and drew him down to the ground with what they call in aikido an "ikkyo," kind of a variation in which one pulls the opponent down while backing up, rather than guiding the enemy's arm forward. Asuka's basically sensei-level in the art, and I have to give her props._

_ When Leo inevitably reached his feet again, she delivered once more with a punch and then spin punch, and then floored him anew with, again in aikido, a kokyunage in which she guided his neck against her chest (nothing suggestive here…believe me) in a half-circle or so with one hand, then turned and threw him down with the other._

_ Sorry for the technical stuff. After that, ol' Zooks was done with the little fairy lion cub anyway. Although the crap piece still wasn't done with us._

_ When we had our backs turned to him, and Danny and I were about to exchange our "I do"s, he lunged at us again; this time he tried to draw ME in and pull an open-handed punch off right between my…my girls. This was when Dan finally stepped in. This time he grabbed the little pussycat, sans the cat, and held him aloft with one hand a second…then my husband punched him the fuck away. We all knew that Leo was going to try yet again, so Dan then launched into what was probably the slowest forward jump kick I've ever seen—but it worked, sending the boorish boy down again. For good measure, my man then, with some visible effort, threw Leo over his shoulder in a crude-looking judo throw, after a heave or two. Or three. (Hey, as it was mentioned above, you gotta try, and try, and try, right?) After this, Dan ended his part with a few cyboplasmic hadoukens that made Leo go down convulsively and pathetically, like a CSI Bieber. I still am entranced by my pink paladin of pleasure._

_ Dan then began to walk away, in any case…then I went ahead and jumped in, even though I was sure that Leo was through by now. I figured, I might as well make the point personal to the precocious pixie that was Leo—it was me he wanted anyway. So I commenced to beat him down with a jumping spinning corkscrew kick, then a low sweeping version of it. I then threw some delicate chops into the boy's bloodied face for good measure—I'd say I delivered about, say, thirty to fifty or so. Finally I jumped atop his shoulders…for a second, so Dan wouldn't go from pink to green too much…then I drove the petulant child into the ground with my knee. Leo didn't protest my union with Dan anymore after that._

_ We tied the knot thereafter, finally. Danny now says that after this tournament, he's gonna take me honeymooning, to Capcomverse's South America (which I think is nexties on our tourney itinerary anyway, but still) as well as Hong Kong. I promise to bring back lots of pink things! …When I come back, of course, which won't be for some time I'm afraid._

_ Daddy, I know you love me, and I will always have you as Number One in my heart. Daniel is just the biggest Number Two I could have ever possibly have hoped to have met, and married, and loved._

_ Cloyingly Yours,_

_ Lili Rochefort-Hibiki_

_PS: I found out later, as Asuka told me, that Leo was actually a SHE and not a "he"! Turned out that SHE brought me flowers out of fandom and not fucklust, Daddy. I felt kind of bad for her; Zooks said she felt a little off too in putting E-LEO-nore in her place, but that it had to be done, as she was a little firebrand of a filly. Anyways, I was a smidge remotely impressed with her fighting skills, so out of pity I hired her as a bodyguard. I'll be looking out, when I get back from the honeymoon, for any more bundles of roses, or Sixth-Tournament-Announcer-forbid *shrines* she might set up in my name, though._

CHAPTER FOUR: TARGET VERSUS BLANKA, DEEJAY, EDDY GORDO

The three warriors assigned to the electric power plant at the edge of San Francisco were a mite bit unsettled at first, as they crossed the threshold into the plant's main floor, by what sounded like Dirty Harry uttering the phrase, with the appropriate impact sound following, which only one of the trio recognized:

"GET READY FOR THE NEX-T BAT-TLE…" (DWANN)

Then they heard the most unsettling of musical themes in the background as everything around them—the floors and platforms and controls and power nodes and what not—began to light up with an eerie, greenish hue.

All three fighters let the tune of dread settle in their skulls for a second, two of them wondering what kind of kook or freak they would be up against.

The other fighter—the most rambunctious of the three—was preoccupied with anything but that.

"Eyah, what is 'dis rhythm they pipin' in? It be vexin' me ta da point I wanna quing up my netha cheeks! Are they goin' ta be sacrificun' some chickens up in dis' electrical yard now? Ma Santeria membaship card is expired, mon!"

"Dee Jay…what the FUCK, man."

"WHAT?! I jes' be panickin' in this gloomy joint! Don' be givin' me no screw face, Eddy."

But the Tekkener was anything but pleased with this one half of the Capcommers with which he was grouped. "You are a complete stereotypical DISGRACE to all non-African blacks." He started to handspring away, then paused a second. "Actually, no. To ALL black people, ever."

Eddy blanched at the abashed smile that he received in return. "I mean, Jesus, like take that, for instance! …You could at least get your wisdom teeth removed—like, all nineteen of them."

"I be packin' my maracas for 'DIS facety fuckery?! Galang, ya sapps."

Again Eddy started to wheel away, in warming himself up for a Capoeira beatdown of whatever opponent would show up—and/or of DeeJay, if/when necessary, when he stopped in midwhirl.

"_What_ did you just call me?"

DeeJay started himself to flex out his legs and flip around as he went on with the Brazilian brother, the jumping Jamaican maxing out on stereotypical lingo moreso than Kelly Carpenter on eighties uppers. "Ya sistren, she control' ya widder bitchin' 'bout da grampa bein' all sick…ya be nutten but punk bait for ya sistren and such!"

"Christie's not my sister, you Christing jerk chicken jackass…and her grandfather's DEAD…!"

As the two warriors on the same side began to wheel toward each other in impromptu battle, Blanka was busy investigating the place and waiting for the assigned adversary to alight in their area. The green gremlin leapt about here and there, checking all the power stations around for potential hiding places. "I've always wished I had more friends," he growled, "and now I'm wishing to have more _enemies?_ Is he hiding from us? Where the hell is this guy?!"

Then said superalien of the moment warped in, and all three of the other warriors froze.

Unfortunately, DeeJay's thoughts probably interpreted the enemy's appearance best.

_ Is 'da fool like a TV set on legs, mon? Will I be peepin' at my _As Da Worl' Turns_ while boxin' and cuss-cussin' with dis' battyman? _

Indeed, the terrorizingly tacky Target in front of the fighters was a peach-hued humanoid, ostensibly wearing some kind of armor, with what looked like a bluish television screen as the faceplate, and an antenna atop the head.

"Oogh, oogh, OWWOOO!" hollered Blanka, in a vain attempt to scare the incoming enemy. He flipped up and down in place, in excitement for the impending match. "So what do we have the displeasure of calling you, buddy?"

The figure was silent for a second. Then: "I am what influences your thoughts, your words, your actions. I am what you've watched and loved all these years.

"I am…"

But Blanka didn't wait to hear the end of it. He balled up and propelled himself over to the opponent's position, his spherical form shooting off sparks of cyboplasm as he went, only to have his mark jump out of the way at the last second.

"_…ANTENSE,_" the Target finished as he reached the higher ground.

"Antense?!" said the green galoot as he looked up to where he prey escaped to, "Like, really? Like, it's supposed to be like 'Antenna' and 'Intense' all Blanka-balled into one?!"

"…Yeah."

"ENOUGH!" cried the Brazilian beast as he vaulted up to the place where "Antense" stood proudly. He then leapt over right next to the Target, and before the latter could raise his weird apparatus arm to block, the Blankster clawed him hard with an overhanded face swipe. "Here, let me change yer channel for ya!"

The swooping hand clunked hard against the enemy's faceplate, and Antense was sent sprawling down. Blanka stood over the opponent, ready again to pounce and trounce. "Mama Samantha always told me to keep my TV watching to a diet of informational programs…now I'm gonna indulge a bit!"

So the second that Antense reached his feet again, the vampiric viridian vandal hopped atop his opponent, taking the time and care to nom down on the creature's shoulders here, and then there. Blanka then kicked the enemy away, against the far wall atop a platform, near an imposing three-foot-tall node.

Blanka leapt over one more time, then crouched, charging for his electricity move to put the televisory tool down for good. But the lime lubber never knew that, even for him, he was out of his league with Antense when it came to electrical energy.

With a flourish, the Target threw forward a ball of energy of his own, the projectile striking the node and sending electrical concussive force in three directions, one of which bathed the Blanks in a stream of his own ionizing force. With a disheartened growl, the beast fainted to the floor, all but defeated.

"Looks like I'm going to have to give you a bit of a more…hostile _reception,_" said Antense, over the downed form of Blanka, to the other warriors as the enemy adjusted his antenna with his free hand.

"RECEPTION?!" another voice cried from afar. All the combatants turned, but they could not find the source of the inflection. "DO YOU MEAN, LIKE, THE RECEPTIONIST?!"

An awkward pause. Then Eddy, redoubling his nerve, tried to clamber up in time to rescue his newfound compatriot, but he reached the higher platform just in time only to watch TV as it brought its weird arm down, pummeling Blanka into official submission.

This sent the go-getting Gordo into a beast mode of his own. Leaping and tumbling over to the enemy all capoeira-y, he then backsprung into a fading double-legged kick just as Antense struck the node again to make sparks fly. The resultant assault booted the alien opponent back against the wall, and the shock missed the Tekkenite as he was already aloft when it struck for a second, Eddy thus avoiding electrocution while airborne like a painfully-splitting Van Damme in that one seminal scene in _Timecop_…but with more flair. (Of course, one would get the reference, as Van Damme has always been globally-required viewing).

The Tekkener then backflipped away a couple of times, baiting Antense to chug along and follow, which the latter did duly. Just as the enemy leapt over Eddy's head, which he had hoped, leaving Gordo's back to the precarious edge of the platform, Eddy jumped forward to the mark, hopping up briefly to take Antense's odd head between his feet, then twist his body around to throw the enemy in the opposite direction and off their high perch.

Antense crashed down—hard—just feet away from DeeJay, but before the chicken jerk could do anything, Eddy jumped down alongside and shot one of his usual miserable looks at the other warrior. "DeeBag, no…this is my fight."

And then the Tekkenese lunged with a clawing hand, as did Blanka before, in an effort to "change the channel" one last time on Antense…

…but the other had already thrust his weird arm into Eddy, like a sword, and the physical shock of the stabbing, combined with the electrical shock of the implement, made the Capoeira Captain sink like a sack of _cupuacu_ fruit. (It's from Brazil).

As Antense then drove his arm down again into the unmoving Eddy, DeeJay—who completely stood by, doing nothing for a moment and being glad that the Gordo was getting his—put forth: "Don' think ye be fixin' to cock it up on me like that, ya drop-legs doondoos!"

The other one standing was so fucking confused as to what the hell DeeJay was trying to convey with his effing dialect that it stopped him a second—which gave the stymieing speaker a chance to strike.

"Da truu is," DeeJay went on, as he slide-tackled his enemy with a double-legged sweep, "ya can't keep up wid' my riddim!" And this just as the demonic theme in the background sped up once again, in its incessant looping, to that of a demonic hoedown.

Antense went to raise his arm weapon to strike out at a nearby node, but the Deej lashed out with some hoppy-ass spin kicks to put him down again.

"I'm'a vank on ya wid my ackee-sticks now!"

While Antense was still down, DeeJay took it upon himself, as did El Fuerte with his fryer and Ibuki with her kunai, to foreign-object-eff the enemy into submission. As perhaps many gamers wanted to do while "enjoying" the seeming Ken's "streetfighting" adventure in 2010 with this Target or others, in which one might have been compelled to strike out at the television with a bat or a club, so now did DeeJay beat a progressive rhythm out on the monitorlike faceplate with his perpetual maracas. Cyboplasmic loogers dutifully splashed all around, off the Target's faceplate, from the beats as well.

[ISHISHISHISHISHISH] [BWAMA BWAMA BWAMA]

"Are ya getting' da riddim now, ya batty ass?"

Deej continued on this tack for about another ten seconds, threshing away at his opponent as if he were trimming down a bonus round luxury sedan. Seconds later, though, a strange, buzzing tune ensued.

One which sounded all too familiar, to DeeJay and his acquaintances.

_[Veh, veh-veh, veh-veeeAAAGHH, veh-veh, veh, veh-veh, veh-veeeAAAGHH, veh-veh, veh-veh-veh-veh-VEHHH-veh-veh-veh-veh, veh, veh-veh, veh-veeeAAAGHH…]_

It sounded like the infamous fighting theme music of a particular streetfighting individual, but the somewhat weak home console sixteen-bit version of it…as if it were being played tightly through a lamb's anus or something. (Not that this author has ever done that or anything).

It still sounded a bit more compelling than that same system's violin music effects in some games, which sounded like string instrument overtures issuing from the bottom of an ocean made entirely up of triple-thick milkshake.

"Be that…

"_Guile's_ theme?!"

And then, for the first time, DeeJay noticed that the faceplate could be removed at certain hinges near the sides of Antense's helmet. Constipated with curiosity, the jerky journeyer tossed his insidious instruments behind his head, undid the latches on the helmet, and took on a mask of shock himself when he discovered that the man himself lay in the suit.

But it was a younger-looking, fresher, much more vibrant Guile who was wearing the peach suit…his face leaner and the sparkle in his eyes much more pronounced, almost like…

…Almost like the depiction of Guile as he was in his very first Capcomverse appearance—in the original Street Fighter II way back in 1991.

"Oh my…Mama Sam," Blanka uttered, having come to just instants ago as he looked over DeeJay's shoulder into the thinner face of this original gangsta Guile. "You…_you_ were that…Antense…the whole time? You look…you look like you did when we first…"

"They cap…captured me," choked out the leaner Guile, as he sputtered from within his suit. He was alive, for sure, but wearied greatly by his experiences. "Back around late '91. You know how…the main guy from _Cheers_…been away from Earth so long, can't even 'member his name…you know how he was in that one action movie…his stunt double…made to replay…replace me."

In the Capcomverse's reality exclusively, it was the case that not Bruce Willis from _Moonlighting_, but rather Ted Danson from _Cheers_, was tapped to play John McClane in the first _Die Hard_ film. For the feature—which fans dubbed _Dans Hard_, in honor of its star—many stunts were required, of course, and Sam Malone wasn't willing to them himself. His stunt double was an ambitious man, and studied many martial arts before MMA even became a mainstream thing really.

In the ensuing moments, this besuited Guile explained to them that when _Dans_, er, _Die Hard 1_ was in postproduction, the stunt double contacted some of the scientists with whom the buzzcut Ken was aligned, in order to become enhanced with cyboplasm and have his fighting skills increase dramatically. The double was obsessed with Guile as well, whom he had seen in the Second Street Fighting Tournament in 1991. Realizing that they could use a real Street Fighter in the battle against the superaliens of outer space, and being inspired by the Danson double's love for Guile, the cyboscientists captured the real Guile, imbued him with cybotreatments as well, and shot him up into space among several planets, over the twenty-plus years from 1991 to 201X, for him to be used as a weapon against the unknown in our solar system. In the meantime, after the very first Second Tournament, with that Guile's face all lively and sprightly, we all got the Dansonite doubling as Guile, with his sallow cheeks and miserable gaze, ever since the effing _Champion Edition_ of the Second Tournament.

And though he was living the dream, the Danson Guile was getting more and more miserable with each tourney. Over the ensuing years his brow thickened more and more, his gaze intensified in a terrible way, and he even started doing more outlandish things to keep with the persona of the original, coolblow Guile being a soldier, such as uttering "Mission Start!" before fighting.

Then there was the whole tucking the sunglasses thing.

When Julia Jane and Eliza were engaged in another sympathy coffee klatch one day, Julia Jane confided, "You know, that…around the time of that supposed reconstructive surgery Guile had…he changed within as well as without. Over the years he's become…more and more distant, more detached…but the worst is what he does with his sunglasses."

"What do you mean, Jules?" Eliza asked whimsically.

"Well, you know, he's been doing that thing lately where he takes off his shades and then tucks them…into his back pocket. That's what he does before a televised or otherwise publicized fight, anyway. But on some evenings…I pull back the covers, while he's sleeping—and he doesn't even wear boxers but we don't need to get into that—and I see a pair of his sunglasses lodged, well…you know," and then she leaned in closer, to Eliza's ear, "…where he poos.

"It's reheheally making me upset these days!" Julia Jane choked out sobbingly, and Eliza offered her comforting solace in a sympathetic embrace.

If only Julia Jane knew the truth, about what happened to the real Guile…

"Well, don't worry, man," said Blanka, helping the Coolblow Guile to his feet as the Antense helmet was pushed a bit aside, "Julia Jane has been married still to you…I mean, to the Danson Guile…"

At this, Coolblow gritted his teeth, to make him begin to approach the miserable countenance of his long term replacement.

"…but at least she's still around. We'll talk to her, bring her up to speed, and bring the other, poser one to justice."

Coolblow Guile crinkled his usually easygoing brow, and upon managing himself all the way to his feet, whipped out a comb to adjust his hair real fast. He then placed the item back into his pocket, DeeJay and the others watching very carefully to ensure that this Guile was placing the thing back in his _pocket._

"What?" was all the original soldier could say. This Guile didn't know about the whole Danson shades thing yet (that latter explanation was just narration, and not from Coolblow's words).

The fighters would have to take their time in breaking that whole part to him.

"Good work, World Warriors…and Tekkenites too!"

The men present whipped around to see the buzzcut Ken strolling in, with Chun Li and Ling Xiaoyu in tow. The former woman was carrying a personal PDA in hand, while the latter was wearing a very concerned and distraught pouting expression.

"You all did very well in helping us progress through Streetcrown, the first stage of the Tournament," continued the alleged Ken. "We still have a ways to go, though."

"Yes," said Chun Li, as she was adjusting something on her on-board, in-hand computer, "my sources are as of now continuing the trace to the person, or persons, behind the organization that is controlling this tournament…something beginning with Ess…it must be Ess Eye Enn again. Believe me, this is far more of a challenge and a strain than anything I have ever encountered inside or outside of my Interpol work."

Xiaoyu just shook her head feverishly. "All I care about is ensuring Jin's safety. We have to be certain that he won't come to harm in all this!"

As was apparent from the recent Pandora misadventure, as well as perhaps other episodes of her life, Ling was obsessed with the welfare of Jin Kazama, perhaps too much so. It was even to the point that, recently, she pulled a stunt online which compromised her reputation—as well as her credibility—with those who knew and loved her. What happened was…

[BLANT…BL-BLANT, BL-BLANT…PLEHPLEHPLEHPLEHPLEHPLEH]

"ORIGINAL GANGSTA COOLBLOW GUILE!"

Before anyone, even this author/narrator, could even issue forth another thought, a whitish-blue interdimensional portal appeared right around the body of the first Guile, and warped him out of the Frisco Electrical Plant. And just after Blanka uttered excitedly just now, the screened helmet of the Antense suit, pushed to the side and momentarily forgotten, crackled to life.

The seeming Ken scampered over to it, and picked it up. He almost wanted to drop it again at the sight of the figure that he saw depicted.

It was the face of a mysterious woman, with chestnut hair running down in waves. She wore a russet dress that could be seen down to the upper chest on the screen, and her hands covered her face, with her right palm covering the right half of it and the left palm covering the bottom half of it, so that only one umber eye—and thus one quarter of her countenance—could be seen.

Who the hell was she?

"Ken," the mysterious woman began, her voice altered only from the muffling of her covering hands.

"Who's there?" the buzzcut one demanded, angrily. "How do you know my name?!"

Behind him, all but one fighter stood similarly stunned and stymied, her reverie over her obsessee broken for the time being.

The image in the screen did not waver. It continued, "That's not important. You can consider me…a friend. I am the one who is behind this little, princely tourney event. You have all done well thus far. The tournament will now progress to the second phase, which will be on Soilmound, which is in the jungley selva of Colombia, in South America."

"Who are you, and why are you staking the lives of Street Fighters and Tekkenites for your own gain?" demanded Chun Li, as she multitasked in adjusting some coordinates on her computer.

"Oh my God," said Xiaoyu in the background, throwing her hand to her head. "Dude, Chuns…and all you guys! Can't you all _see?!_ That…Receptionist that Ken here was boohooing about before…the dress, the hair…this is _her!_ Just because she has her hands over her face…"

"Ay, ay, Kickstartah!" chided DeeJay, shaking his maracas stereotypically, in time with the new BAKALAKABANG, BAKALAKABANG menacing music accompanied by this video villainess. Ling then knowingly cast her head down in shame, and desisted.

Everyone, from fellow Tekkeners to Street Fighters now, knew of Ling's Youtube-and-otherwise-online gambit, and how it was now biting her hard in her orange-cheongsamed posterior. For a time, she held an Indiegogo fundraiser, in which she was trying to get donations in order for her to build a machine that would send Jin Kazama to a pocket dimension where he would be safe and sound. The rewards involved, she felt, were worthwhile: all one had to do, for instance, was give $100,000, and he or she would be the proud recipient of one of Panda's power bracelets. Sure, Panda herself—who was Xiaoyu's original soulmate—wasn't too nuts about this prize; whatever it took to ensure the security of the one over whom Ling obsessed, though.

When the girl only raised about $13.75 in the end, the value of her laughingstock soared enough to get the United States—in all alternate realities—out of the recession it's in now.

And now no amount of circling stars, or skulls, or baby chicks could approach the amount of time that Ling Xiaoyu was rendered vulnerable to attacks by just about anyone who wanted to rub it in while she was down. It was enough, actually, to render her the Greek Cassandra (no, not Sophitia's sister—the far less annoying one, from real Greek mythology) of her time, shouting warnings about things with no one believing her.

"Guys! Come on! I'm trying to help here!" she insisted.

"Hey, Ling," said Eddy, actually lightening up a second, "you know what I heard about Jin?"

"_What?!_" she shouted, whirling around suddenly, and sporting that adorable pout from Street Fighter X Tekken that increased her cuteness factor astronomically.

"I heard that he's switched from using Crest Toothpaste, to Colgate!"

This was enough to set her off. "_JIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNN!_" the girl screamed frantically, sprinting out of the plant to be that much closer to the one over whom she constantly watched. The scream itself, now reverberating through the walls of the facility, made Ling sound like a certain 1990s cartoon mutant superhero who would utter a similar, repeated yell over his own beloved, such that now it was Ling Xiaoyu who could be most freely associated with that particular superhero, rather than the crewcut Ken with his constantly shaded eyes.

Even the whimsical woman on the screen was distracted by all this a second, as she turned her palm-covered face a second to watch the girl run out of the place. She then fixed her one umber eye back on Ken. "Why do you pursue me, Kev-, er…Ken?" she queried, waveringly a second.

Ken blanched a moment himself, as if something critical had been surrendered. He then thought a second. _If I'm to be associated with Duke Nukem a bit, in terms of my looks, I might as well play the part also, in terms of his chauvinist obnoxiousness._

The hero screwed up a determined look, his nerve returned, and he met the menacing lady straight in the eye.

"You killed my best receptionist."

END PART ONE


	2. Chapter 2: South America (Soilmound)

PART TWO: SOUTH AMERICA (OR "SOILMOUND")

CHAPTER FIVE: TARGET VERSUS DUDLEY, BOB, JULIA (AND OTHER AFFAIRS AS WELL)

Watching the Cybosphere crash into the side of the waterfall's cliff at sixty thousand miles per hour made Seth smile, even though he knew that the Street Fighters and Tekkenites would survive the impact. Soon they would all be smashed to pieces anyway, once their shutout streak was inevitably broken by some unstoppable alien who would have to emerge at some point.

In the meantime, the former Ess Eye Enn lord lay back lazily on his lavish deck chair overlooking the Colombian selva in the distance, and resumed planning his scheme for world conquest. Of course, a critical step would involve his ingratiation into the ranks of the oncoming extraterrestrials—once they took over the world first, and fleetingly, of course—and then his undermining of their insidious efforts through his own devious stratagems.

In truth, what would prove indispensable to this operation would be the implementation of all of the fighting essences and styles of those fighters who would fall in the course of this tournament. He was determined to possess every bit of data, and assume the persona in fact of each combatant, be they from the Street Fighter Tournaments or the malevolent Mad Gear Gang.

Yes…the interfering Mad Gears. Seth knew of the Mad Gear's pending interference. He was aware that there would be a small trio of thugs who were planning to crash the second and final major event of this leg of the tourney. Seth certainly did not bother to stop them, for two reasons: one, those whom the Mad Gears would replace would be Tekkenites, and Seth had no use for such piddling individuals (as he could not absorb Namcoan essences after all), and two…well, he just loved chaos, even though he himself was born to be the fifteenth drone in a set of twenty-six, which suggested some kind of overarching order in general.

He had read up on the Gears and admired at least some of the bunch. That aging soldier who was looking to raise hell back at that Solo Striker bar was a good example, for one. The hulking giants, such as Hugo Andores Senior and Junior, were other more than satisfactory exemplars to brute strength and raw power. Seth would certainly not mind absorbing such savage might, of such tremendously powerful males, all into his own system.

Then there were Roxy and Poison. Seth was well aware that these two would drop in, respectively, in two separate events in the tourney. He saw them as very spry and very sly, and for certain, he would be more than glad to induct the spirits of those two ladies into his body as wel…

…But wait. Ladies…were they _really_ ladies, after all? Seth HAD to know. The fact was that if he mischaracterized the gender of the individual whose essence he was absorbing, it might cause a chain reaction which could seriously compromise, if not destroy, his entire synthetic constitution.

And in this alternate version of the Capcomverse, it was not, even in the year 201X, definitively settled as to whether the two WERE women or men. It was always a question for the ages in this reality, and people always deferred asking the vermilion and violet vixens their gender, for they feared reprisal in the form of the two individuals themselves causing the inquiring parties severe harm, or in the alternative, the two individuals' familiars—the Andores the First and Second—doing the damage.

Neither of these was desirable in the least for anyone.

Seth was not just anyone, though. He was determined, and he knew that he would have to get to the bottom of this burning query of gender determinacy. He would even institute a totalitarian regime of other clones, as well as indigenous Colombian natives, all of whom would toil in his name in the endeavor of determining the ultimate philosophical question of all time:

_ What the hell was the gender of Roxy and Poison?_

Miles across the panorama from the scheming Seth, a couple of Tekkeners and a sprightly Street Fighter continued dusting themselves off from the wreckage of the recently-landed Cybosphere. While so many other warriors gathered themselves for other rounds to come, Julia Chang turned to Bob and patted him on the shoulder as they faced the area which they needed to scale at present.

"Thanks so much for shielding me against the impact in the 'Sphere, Robert," she said warmly. "You weight can be used in…so many ways."

_You don't know all of those ways, baby,_ the portly pugilist thought as he watched the lovely lady walk on over to a nearby vine. As he kept looking on a second, he wished that Julia would hug a certain something else, other than the usual tree, for once.

He knew that there would be an upcoming tournament between the Capcommers and the Namcoans, should they all survive this. Not unlike a gawky boy pitching to be a pretty girl's lab partner, or a young buck rolling on up to propose a prom date with a debutante, Bob was preparing himself to propose a bounty hunter job for Julia...all in the name of helping her restore the rainforest and all of that crap. Sure, she could see his name in the paper and what not-the Bounty Blubber with Bling, and all-but, with this intercontinental tourney on the agenda, why not take the opportunity to ingratiate himself with the comely Miss Chang a bit sooner?

Meanwhile, all Jules could think of was a living kingdom of an entirely different ilk. She never knew any man's touch for very long-whether the that touch came from a thin digit, or a tubby one-and instead focused all of her passions in plants, much to the libidinal discomfiture of most every guy with whom she came into contact. For all they knew, the girl was holding out not for the right man, but for the right effing mokujin, given the fact that she was so much more beholden to flora than to fauna.

Then, of a sudden: "Well, _I'm_ right okay, yeah?"

Bob looked over to the proper boxer who also emerged from the Sphere just moments ago, and grinned slightly. He was sore afraid for a number of moments that this Dudley would make trouble for him with Julia, making for some kind of knockdown, dragout Twilight (with Bob himself in the prevailing Pattinson role, of course)—but this man was a real class act.

Besides, it seemed that Dudley too, again not unlike Julia, was more enamored with flora than fauna anyway. The gentleman, at first glance, appeared to be the same burly boor as, say, his red-gloved counterpart on the other side of the planet. Once one was treated to his dulcet conversational tones per se, however, in addition to the pleasure of his intellectual insights, this initial impression was all but inverted. Perhaps the only disconcerting aspect of the man, after one had engaged him initially, was his somewhat unsettlingly severe penchant for plantlife. This was something that only a doddering, doting old codger named Gotch could possibly tolerate, as no one else (at least under the prime age of ninety) could stomach such an obsession for more than the duration of a round of any streetfighting frolic.

"I say," the blue-gloved boxer went on, "Never have I lain eyes on so many…beautiful…specimens of plants in my entire English existence! I am just…beside myself. Oh, if only Mr. Gotch were here; for certain he would give an appreciative word as well. Although I usually am of a mind to keep such wonders arranged neatly in garden plots…"

"Believe me, Dudley," said Julia, winding on back from her embrace of the nearest human-width vine, "About the Nature vibe on the whole, I share your sentiment wholeheartedly. …It's just that, for me, well…it's usually plantlife of this scale that captures my heart all the time, so as much as you may give an approving eye towards all we see, I am in all my glory.

_Babe,_ Bob thought, as he continued to watch the woman for whom he yearned, _that totally makes two of us. Eat your heart out, Andy Bogard or any other man who thinks he's got it made with the woman he's with. I've got it going on much more than you'll ever have it._

And so the three set off to begin climbing. They were informed by the crewcut Ken that their Target was up a ways, and would make them work to get to it. It was a bit of a pain, but the Fighter and Tekkeners optimistically viewed it as a workout before the real thing.

"Nothing like getting warmed up before the heat of the fight," Julia said, somewhat cheerily. "And with all this oxygen that the plants around us are giving off, we should have that much more energy for the match ahead. I just love being out here, don't you, Robert? Any time out in greenery is never really work for me…it's just free play."

Bob nodded at this with a slight grin playing across his face. Secretly he fantasized about Julia replacing "free" with "fore" in the previous sentence, and he fantasized about what would come thereafter.

"I am completely of one accord with you both," said Dudley, in a similarly Pollyannaish way, as he took a second after scaling a few vines to rest. He strolled over to what looked like a reddish dandelion—the kind which kids would blow the heads off of. "I would even go so far as to say that plants are…pleasant, in a way that humans areNNNNN'T…"

He was cut off when suddenly the reddish flower he was about to basically _pet_ had bopped its head his way, striking him in the back and almost to the ground. What then was frightening was that the thing had begun to _walk_ Dudley's way while the latter was rolling across the ledge on which the warriors all stood, the boxer attempting to escape that which he was poised to embrace.

Dudley knew now that the flora here was far more triffid than terrific.

The boxer stood by Bob and Julia, catching his breath for a second, then darted back in against the flower that seemingly had his number, at least for an instant. "I won't let any weed like you win!" he said, now with a certain level of savagery which he had not tapped for an eternity. Without a moment's hesitation, the man moved in and gave the thing three left jabs and a hard right hook, the red flower's head bucking back and forth as if the Duds were just working an ordinary speedbag.

"Now _this_ part of the workout I really like!" the pugilist put in, as he followed up his previous abuse with a duck-back maneuver followed by sliding in with a hard right hook with cyboplasmic signature that made the head of the giant dandelion explode on impact. At this Dudley started, shocked not only at the violence of the flower itself still, but also at its violent and sudden demise.

He found that he could not quit just yet, though, as some strange olive-green…levitating tulip of a sort was tilting its way upward from beneath them; it was about five feet away from the man and he could tell that the thing was lifting its way up just underfoot for Bob and Julia, to perhaps take them out of the game before they even reached their Target. Another one, the Dud man could tell, was issuing upward in pursuit.

The warriors could all tell that they hadn't reached their destination yet, after all, because there was scheduled to be a Tekkenite announcer's declaration when they reached the spot in question, and the only sound that they had heard thus far had been that of the plaudits and praise, then the pounding and pummeling, of these plants.

In any case, Dudley now rushed over, to wave the obese and the injun out of the way while he could best attack the interloping 'lips, as in-the-zone as he was. He pulled a double uppercut on the first, then grabbed the second and gave it two right jabs and a left hook. Dudley positioned matters so that the floral frights fell around the same area…then when they both rose anew, he executed a jumping uppercut, with a cyboplasmic corona encasing it that reduced the greenery to just so much grass.

Once these terrors were out of the way, and Dudley gathered his strength to move on once more, and Julia managed to get out from underneath Bob, who was virtually on top of her out of instinctively abject fright at the man-pursuing plants (and honestly, at that moment, not for any more...sketch kind of reason), the warriors wound themselves up to continue to the top. They did their best to recover the spirits that they had before, but each had to admit within himself or herself that such a sentiment could not be fathomed now.

"You know," Bob tried, with knowing futility as he started, billowing to the top of the strange structure of foliage that they had all been climbing heretofore, "even after almost being…violated by a flying tulip…or two…I can still get into Nature! Yeah! This place was meant for us all to embrace!" (It was really all about his ulterior motives at this point anyway).

Julia looked askance at the man, as she too knew full well that he really just wanted to wedge his bloated ballast into her slim skivvies…but she put her head up as well. "Hmm…yes, Robert, I suppose." She looked out at the sublime panorama that showed off the vast canopy of Colombian trees and managed a slight smile. "You really can't deny, after all, that this is certainly God's country."

_ "YOU SURE SAID IT, LADY. I OWN THIS BITCH IN FULL."_

"Wh…Wha?"

_ "ERM, AHEM, I MEAN, GET READYYYYYY, FOR THE NEXT BATTLE (ATTLE ATTLE ATTLE ATTLE)…"_

Then five minutes later, the always-delayed obligatory KRENNNGGG sound issued. No organism in existence could begin to posit why the Almighty always had that interminable delay between his announcement and the impact sound, but one could journey upstairs and then downstairs, to either end of the hereafter, in the space of that effing lag. Bob shook his head at all of this in particular, while the faint noise of two other announcers slapping their own respective foreheads reported from far away.

"I don't see any threats around here…the next battle?" As Dudley finished this sentence, he looked around, and fell heartily for the most magnificent redhead he could possibly ever imagine.

"This…this exuberant plant," he said, sidling up to a crimson bloom that must have been about four inches in length, "it's…it's so exquisite." He inspected it closer, and almost wanted to cry. "I…between the three of us, I must confess as to my antipathy towards the floral race these past several minutes…and seek absolution through the adoration of this wonderful creation!"

"Wait, Duds…don't…!" Bob attempted, having noticed that the bloom had blasted out some sort of strange pollen, silently, a second sooner-but his words of warning fell on deaf ears. Dudley had already picked up the flower and placed the bud upon his lapel.

He then turned fully to face the other two fighters, spreading his gloved hands wide. "I must declare that I've never, until now, felt so high in myyyyyIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIGGGHHHHHH!"

And then Dudley was made to feel even higher, literally, as the flower, still tucked into the man's lapel, almost seemed to rocket him into the air about fifteen feet. Not unlike the red dandelions below, it then sprouted some kind of strange feet, while in midflight, which kicked it free from the crook in Dudley's clothing. It was all the man could do to grab onto the stem of the thing itself in its downward descent, then meet the viney ledge below, facefirst upon impact, to fall into oblivious unconsciousness.

"Don't even bother asking my name," the thing then somehow…emitted as it turned its perverse petals around to face Bob and Julia. "I'll spare you the suspense; it is what you surmised it would be upon first sighting my fine form…

"My appellation is none other than the jolting, justiferous _JUMPANSY!_"

Bob just stood there, mired in complete stupefaction, as he began to start to try to get his hands around how utterly idiotic that name sounded. Did the plants just have that bad of an intrakingdom naming system, or did they just have that bad of a sense of humor?

No matter now, though, as the lumbering lardass was now being tugged at hard on the arm by Julia to get the hell out of the way of this toxic weed. Bob followed his crush in sidestepping this "Jumpansy" just in time as its feet a second later planted themselves (literally) in the craterous impression the man made, and where he stood up till instant ago.

"You wanna go first, or I…?" Miss Chang shouted to Mister Chubs.

"Beauty before blubbbUGH," Bob almost managed to get out, as a sharp projectile—some kind of pollen—dug itself into his back. Now this leaping lily was into spitting things at them? Was this the floral equivalent of cyboplasm?

In any case, the fat eff wasn't out for the count, but he staggered, so Julia stepped in. She couldn't believe that she was executing combos against a fucking weed, and more generally and importantly, against that part of Nature which she fought to defend all these years, but there she was. Julia began with a forward punch, then into a downward swing and an upward chop to send the flower into a funk a second; seeing it so dizzied, she then did her standing spin kick-to-crouching spin kick-to-standing side kick combo on the thing as well. At this Jumpansy tottered back even further, and ever more towards an open edge of the plant platform (plantform?!) on which they were standing. Julia figured that if she could pull one of her patented throws on the thing, she could send it downward and hopefully snap its fragile flower stem, er, neck, of a sort. And so, taking advantage of yet another instant in which the enemy did not counter, the elusive Michelle Chang's foster daughter gripped up the 'Pansy, hoisted it onto her shoulders, then attempted a side dive to drive the opponent up and off the ledge on which they were situated.

Unfortunately for Julia, she was not aware that the flower could fly in addition to jumping. (Of course, Jumpansy wouldn't let her know that in advance.) As such, just as Julia let her adversary begin to drop off the "plantform" post-throw, the thing not only levitated itself back into the ether, but also executed a strange, swinging zoom that summarily met up with Julia's lovely face, the flower smashing into her nose harder than a wayward football could ever devastate the features of Marcia Brady.

"I might recommend some aloe for that impact, my dear lady," taunted the effing flower as it flew, "although you won't be getting any from my vivacious veins…!"

The woman's head faced away from Bob as she now lost consciousness, and the amorous obesity was glad for this, as he didn't want his idealized image of the comely Chang to be compromised any by this blustery bloom's battering. He tensed up now, anticipating the instant at which this Jumpansy jonquil jackass would aim its zoom his way. Indeed, the enemy arced sideward, looking to zing just for the flaxen-tressed fat fuck the very next moment.

Then at the last second, before the beast could bury its bud into his body, Bob bounced up with a belly bash that bruised the bastard of a flower into a state of stun once again. Before it could react again, the man lashed out again with a double-handed overhand smash that rended a couple of petals from the thing, and then pulled off a low-to-high haymaker combo that took off a couple more.

Noticing this overt shedding, Bob then became wise to new and much more gratifying tack. "Let's see," he said, grasping the Pansy into one oversized, portly paw and looking out his peripherals at the still-prone Julia, "What do we think, JumpPANSY?!

"She loves me?" And with this, a couple more "limbs" were torn from the Target, nearing it ever closer to defeat. "She loves me not?"

"AGH!" the flower screamed in the man's palm. "Spare me the 'corpulent yet charming' act bullshit and rip me up already! I can tell in your pheromones that you want the girl, anyway…jump her bones while she's out…while you still have the chance!"

"You, sucker, are surely one bad seed," Bob said in reply as he authoritatively rent the enemy in two with his grubby mitts the next moment.

He added, to its very-fragmented remains, "I might be a horny heavy, but I would NEVER take advantage of a woman like that. You fucker of a flower."

Minutes later, the three warriors were all come-to and convinced that they were all now completely done with the plant kingdom for all effing time.

"Well, to be honest, I never really gave a tree's turd about the environment," said Bob, as he began to shimmy his super-sized bottom onto a withering branch. "I really just acted like I was getting into it all to…" and then he looked to Julia, who already had a sour look on her beauteous face. "Nevermind. See y'all at the bottom!"

That was one more babe, the beefy man supposed, that he would have to cross off his list. She probably wasn't his type anyway. (She certainly wasn't his size). No matter: there were still tens of ton-weighted women in the world for him to find, and conquer, in time…and in Tekken sequels.

"As soon as I get home," Dudley resolved, grabbing a trunk of his own to slide down, "I will inform Mr. Gotch that if he values his future employment, he would do well to exterminate every last piece of refuse weed in my backyard—and by that, I'm referring to the entire garden—posthaste!"

As for Julia, the young woman didn't even bother to mince any words at all. She only allowed herself the thinnest of grins, as she daydreamed a variation of a prior whimsy she once had, at the close of the Fifth/Darkly Resurrected Iron Fist—the former vision involving herself hugging a large glass container full of greenery prototypes that would revive an entire rainforest—and now the daydream consisting of her again sinking slowly, ecstatically to her knees, and wanting to cry tears of joy…

…but now, while embracing a giant canister of what she would design to become atomic herbicide, one dose applicable to an entire planet, the container itself made from both the guy and girl Mokujins' lumbery heads and cut with the assistance of Alisa's armsaws.

Elsewhere in the Colombian selva jungle, about a few kilometers away…

It was all Yoshimitsu could do to obscure himself from the hyperheat sensors of Bryan Fury, even in all this foresty boscage. Lord knew that, at least in another alternate reality in which Bryan prevailed in the Fifth Iron Fist, foliage never worked to protect or hide the helicoptering ninja anyway.

It certainly wasn't an issue as to stealth per se. Yoshi was one of the ghostliest of operatives for the Manji clan, and was a secretive man in general. Not unlike a leonine wrestling counterpart in so many past Iron Fists, he wasn't a person to reveal his real face. Even when he dreamed of the Devil Cat-which he did often despite the fact that she was a larcenous little lass-he fantasized about a skull-and-vulpine-countenanced tryst between the two.

The most dangerous "Cat" in the ninja's life, however, was that cantankerous cyborg who wanted his Manji manpelt collection completed posthaste. Yoshi didn't know why, but Bryan Fury was hellbent on decimating Manjis, perhaps just because they once aligned themselves with that next-gen Gepetto known as Bosconovitch. The clan was basically at the wrong place at the wrong time when Bryan was trying out his perpetual generator, which he grew into just before the Fifth Fist. Well, Yoshimitsu was going to make the 'borg bawl ruefully at the day he decided to turn Yoshi's fellow shinobi into shinola.

But at any rate, regardless...why, oh why did the Tekkenites here allow themselves to be shut out from their place in the tournament? Even the slickest of them all, the incarnate Rodman that was Raven, was unable to get in, as that damned Gear gang had already invaded the monastery auditorium in which the next fight was to take place, and those fuckers bolted it shut. Supposedly some weird, silver-skinned T-1000 on steroids named Seth helped them out with it all, but at this juncture Yoshi wasn't interested so much. He really just wanted to survive out here.

If only he had been able to score some cybo, like the Street Fighters did, in order to stand up against Bryan's cyber…

"YAA! YAA, YAA!"

[BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM] [SHAPOW SHAPOW SHAPOW!]

With a start, Yoshimitsu made his way past a few more trees, to find the horror from which he had been hoofing it all this time. Sure enough, the cyborg cracka that was Bryan had been opening up with his gatling gun on what looked like several floating brown hubcaps, some firing lasers back at him.

"YAA! YAA!

"HEY…YO-YO!" the cyborg screamed out, to the ether, as in his frenzied surname-sake of a state, he could not detect his ninja archrival, "I HOPE YOU'RE NOT TOO FAR AWAY! I WAS TOLD THAT WITH EACH OF THESE HUNTER DRONES I WENT AND KNOCKED OFF, THE WHITE SHIT THAT SHOOTS OUT IS A SOUL OF A MEMBER OF YOUR SLAUGHTERED CLAN! YOU KNOW, LIKE THE ONE THAT I BUTCHERED MYSELF?!"

At first the robotic Robin Hood thought this a bluff.

Then he heard the shrill, shrieking voices of those whom he knew from before in the Manji clan—those who were offed awfully by the monster before him now.

_No,_ the thoughts sprinted through his mind…No, not you, _Mariomitsu, or you…Luigimitsu…_

_WEEGEEMITSU!_

But then, what was more upsetting than anything…the image of the Devil Cat herself appeared on the bottom side of one of the Hunter Drones—the side from which lasers emitted forth.

_Kuni…!_

Even though the girl stole so much, and she was expelled from his clan because of this, she couldn't—just couldn't—lose her soul in this way. Hell, Yoshimitsu didn't even know she was dead!

"In case you're wondering," the flabbergasting Fury volunteered, as he began to train a murderous magnum on the Hunter housing the essence of the lovely ex-Manji, "Kunimitsu is indeed not dead. She's, in fact, still stealingly alive and well…least as far as I know.

"I can pull her essence from this very Hunter husk, however, alive or otherwise…"

"NOOOOO!"

And with this, Yoshi charged head-on at his mortal enemy, taxiing at Bryan with full helicopter-swording force and hoping to shunt downward with his weapon at the last second so as to take the cyborg's cranium out in one blade-sweep.

But just as the maddened Manji reached a foot from Bryan, the latter swung around with a spinning backfist which bashed into the face of his foe, taking him down onto his back. Bryan then knelt down with Yoshimitsu in between his legs, and pounded away at his enemy ever so psychotically, as he was wont to do in some depictions of victory between various Iron Fist Tournaments.

Satisfied with the pummeling he just palmed off to his perennial opponent, the cybastard then whipped out again his signature magnum, and aimed it Yoshimitsu's way, just as he did at the close of his most satisfying (for him, at least) Fifth/Darkly Resurrected Iron Fist finish.

But then an oversized, lavish shuriken buried itself in the back of the man monster, and the itch of it made him back off from his prey a second.

The Fury whirled around indignantly to see none other than the irrepressible Raven himself, the brotha of budokan now with his arms crossed over his chest and his legs together, the taciturn Tekkenite's frame ramrod(man) straight, yet bouncing up and down repeatedly on the edge of a giant frond in the foreboding forest that they occupied—and he somehow perpetrating this with the most impassive of expressions, even though it came off as looking completely silly.

"_EhaHAGHAGHAGH,_" Bryan cackled, as he always did, leaning back with his come-on pose as well, "You want some of me too…you'll have to take a high-counting Tekken sequel number. Perhaps we can tussle in effing Tag Tournament Thirty-Three."

"I'm here to take you down NOW, Bryan Fury," said Raven in his perpetual "I'm too cool for you" tone.

"And what's your beef with me?" the cyborg said in reply, throwing a heavy kick to the ninja's head just as he landed alongside—which, of course, the svelte Simon-Phoenix-poser ducked. "Do I have all the assassins in the world on a Code Red against me?"

"Yoshimitsu has always regarded you as a thorn in his side," uttered the derivatively-faced Raven, as he side kicked Bryan twice and then put him down with a spin kick, "…and while I am no fanboy of his, I am still determined to get through to him the ninja hand symbols that he has failed to comprehend ever since the Fifth Iron Fist.

"You're just in my way…I need to resolve that…AGH!"

Raven's back arched in involuntary agony as a Hunter Drone flipped on over and fired a laser into his back for seemingly no reason. Instinctively the ninja swatted down the object with a downward strike.

"I always wanted to bust a 'cap' or two in my life," the mysterious assassin mused, "but not one of these…HUBcaps. So I need a real challenge, Bryan…"

Raven, in fact, had always wanted to do a lot of things in his life before becoming a ninja. He frittered away several years playing basketball for the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s, and spent several stints wrestling for the WCW on the side. Then he realized that just about all sports/sports entertainment in America was forced and/or fixed, and he modified his paradigm. He worked as a vampire hunter thereafter, but quit after he failed to stem the tide of awful schmaltzy romantic teen vamps. Especially after almost having become one himself, despite the fact that he was already well into his thirties, he found after all this that he was just best off settling for paltry cool-ass ninjadom.

As Raven turned back, instinctively executing an evasive dive move to avoid Bryan's inevitable scumbag sucker punch, the Rodmanly Tekkenite was stymied to find a seven-foot-tall bluish- silver monolith of a humanoid standing where Bryan once was. In the place where his intestines should have been was one of the flapjack Hunter drones—the one with the Devil Cat's likeness broadcasted on the back of it, facing out to the forbidding Colombian selva.

Raven looked to the side, noted that Bryan Fury was out cold on his back, then immediately turned to the side and buzzed his headset. "What am I up agains…URK…"

"You don't need to contact mission control on this one," said Seth as he raised the assassin high into the air with one hand. "I'll fill you in fully in the course of the next few hours…once you are conscripted into my forces, of course."

"I have no intention…UNGH…of joining you…"

From behind, Yoshimitsu attacked with a spinning strike with his lasery sword facing straight up, then bashing Seth in the small of his back, which would have taken down any normal adversary…of course, the Ess Eye Enngineer was anything but normal, and noted only a slight change in the wind.

Seth reached out with the arm that wasn't strangling Raven and yoked the Yoshi up into a similar position. Hunter hubcaps converged on his position as well, but these weren't even mosquitoes to him. "Undivided attention now from the both of you, I suppose? Good. I require your shinobi skills and surveillance services for a very special…mission I need to undertake. It concerns the welfare of the world…it is a mission for ultimate wisdom and truth. …Hang on a goddamn second."

The fourth Fighter boss tossed the two down a moment so that he could teleport to each respectively irritating hubcap and slap it out of existence. The things were vomiting lasers all over the place, and it was cramping his style, damn it.

"Okay," he resumed, porting back in front of the pair. "No more interruptions. The overarching endeavor which you, I, and a battalion of Colombian conscripts need to engage…is to ascertain the chromosomal designation of two insidiously transacting individuals from a particular metropolis in the United States…"

"_EEEYIH!_" Yoshimitsu exclaimed in his queer scream. He bawled out, in his native tongue, "You want to use our ninja knowhow to find out if a couple of whores are guys or girls?!"

Seth paused, then looked down to the depiction of the Fox's face in his stomach. Yoshi shut up then.

"It is of the utmost importance to my…operation. We must determine whether this…Roxy and Poison are men or women. I cannot assimil…utilize their information properly without this intelligence.

"In addition…I will require your services, if possible, as choristers for the cantillation of a particular anthem which I intend to broadcast…"

"You want us to _sing_ for you, as well?!" queried Raven incredulously. This was not part of the mission to which he was ever so sleekly assigned, and for which he stood atop the Cybosphere, arms coolly crossed, while the damn thing clobbered itself into the side of Colombia at so many miles per hour.

"It is for the maintenance of morale within my Colombian company, as well as for the positive message which I wish to spread to the entire world," said Seth. "My undertaking is to be received with favor—and the next event, in which the red-haired prostitute will be competing, will receive more news coverage than any other moment in this tournament thus far."

"We're gonna be singing on camera, too?!" piped up Bryan, from the corner.

At this Seth only smiled. "You all will know what to do and when to do it. And oh, Yoshimitsu…" he looked over to the cybernetic kook one last time, for now, "all it takes is a bit of…indigestion, on my part, for little Kunimitsu to kick the bucket…so be sure to belt one out extra specially for me."

The skeletal cyberninja could only wince behind his skull mask in despair.

The Ess Eye Enner known as Seth then took his leave through teleportation. Now a mountain away from the Tekkeners, he smiled again, knowing that he would have his tenor in Raven, and baritone in Bryan. And Yoshimitsu—especially with his enforced participation—would make a bigger soprano than James Effing Gandolfini, so certain was Seth of this. There would be no intergender interlopers thwarting his machinations of domination now.

CHAPTER SIX: TARGET VERSUS ROXY, HUGO ANDORE JUNIOR, CODY TRAVERS

(Soft Voiceover from Tekken 5/DR Tournament Prologue Narration, with accompanying theme: _Boop boop, baahhh_…)

(Cut to giant eyeball emanating from ceiling, in cave on distant green planet Soilmound):

_ From birth, the optically abhorrent creature known as Phalliris had always felt out of place. He felt as if he had no real purpose, other than to watch and observe the occurrences going on with other life in his alien ecosystem._

(Depiction of shadowy figures approaching the eyeball from below, on the cave floor:)

_ (Boop, bop, bahhh…)_

_ Then he was met by unknown individuals who offered him a chance to become something—an eyeball enforcer of sorts, not unlike one of his brethren who optically opposed a certain crewcut fighter some years ago, although that corny cornea had lost the fight._

(Image of Phalliris up very close, with pure rage in its peeper:)

_ (Boop, bop, bahhh…)_

_"Hsssss…_ (Tekken 5/DR Narrator in goofy, Kuma-like voice) _I'm not gonna let the same thing happen to me, as happened to that googly goofball!" Phalliris resolves telepathically, regarding his predecessor. Now cognizant of his role in a greater schematic, and anxious to play his part, Phalliris joins what he is informed is known as the Prince of Iron Fist, Power Man, and (The) Whoreverine Tournament 201X._

(End Tekken 5/DR Voiceover)

_Anotha cahtwheel should woick out the kyinks,_ the titian-tressed prostitute thought as she

executed the flourishing whirl a moment later. The abandoned monastery that Roxy and her two thuggish compatriots raided was rather dull for the most part, save for one interesting aspect: There was an auditorium at the edge of it, overlooking a vast airy expanse of clouds and inferior mountaintops below. Moments after discovering that arm of the place, she delved into the libraries of the monastery, reading through ancient Chibcha texts to determine its purpose. (Unbeknownst to Junior or anyone else from the Mad Gears, Roxy spoke, in addition to a white trashy dialect of English, the ancient language of Chibcha, which pertained to the indigenous Muisca people of Colombia. How this manifested was completely obscure to the Gears, or to anyone else in the entire universe).

"Ayy," Roxy shouted, to the others nearby, who were stuffing their faces on meat gleaned from trash cans in the monastery kitchen (as was fitting at least Cody's Final Fight One energy-garnering impulses), "it says heeah that they used the auuuditorium foah sah-crifi-cial baysketball poipesses…koind'a like the Moiyans and the Ayaztecs…"

It turned out that the prost's inflection was not far removed from that of Rufus's own betrothed, so as to suggest, if not confirm, that Candy was a/the third Final Fight Ho (and possibly tranny as well?). As he watched, with his conscripted chorus members, from the shadows, Seth made a mental note to check out Rufus's fight closely, in addition to Poison's, both of which were upcoming in several parts of the tourney.

"Ahh, who really cares," said the eternally-noncommittal Cody, he now just playing idly with his pigsticker out of impatience. (I'm talking about a knife here…put those thoughts away!) "Just as long as we can get this done. I have some prison gruel with my name on it back in the US…it's calling to me, and I just can't get to it quick enough."

Then Hugo Andore Junior's looming shadow fell on the young ex-gangbuster, making him start.

"I thought yoo weyre wid USS, now," the giant boomed, he looking down at least two feet to address. "You dinn NEED to go back to the slammah, now that youse a Mayd Geaah."

Cody said nothing, wishing to keep from those who sprung him this time anything more regarding his intentions to return to his holding cell. Ever since he pulled a semi-heel-turn to give his character a mite bit more personality—not unlike certain sports entertainers, such as Edge or Christian in the WWF/E who became pompous some several years ago, just to give their characters a smidgen of remoteness of flavor—Cody was converted from a generic tee-and-jeans-clad Double Dragon refugee to a jailbird motif in a most forced Capcomian fluctuation of fortunes. As such, he now served no missions or visions, and simply fought for the fuck of it on occasion, then cyclically returned to his correctional confines when he saw fit.

Given the fact that the Capcomverse was committed to perpetually recycling its old properties again and again for the most part, rebooting then rehashing then rebooting again, one might as well have resided in a prison cell. Everyone here was basically doomed to Reside in Evil and Rise Dead and Maybe Cry and Hunt Monsters and Breathe Of Fire and, most prominently for this narrative, of course, Fight Streets for centuries to come.

Even within the Andore clan itself, there was doomed to be perpetual repetition. In addition to the Andores Senior and Junior, who sported purpley pink and blood red animalskin costumes, respectively, there was Fico Andore whose pelt was pus yellow; Ugo Andore, who would go out in gray; and Guido Andore, who bullied around others like a boss in blue. In time, with proper prostitutional pandering, there would be Ludo Andore in lime green, and Ilario Andore in invory white. The initials of the Andores other than Junior and Senior-in order, Fico, Ugo, Guido, Ludo, and Ilario, respectively-would almost spell out the universe's opinion of their looks, if one used license to replace a Y with an I.

As of now, in the present time, it just bored Cody to continue eating, so he set off back toward the auditorium that Junior first discovered. For the first time he noted that the place wasn't as illuminated as it could have been, and that there were some light switches that hadn't been thrown to "On," so he flung his knife handle-first at the setup to click all the bulbs above into an activated status.

What he then noted above him was the most frightening sight he had ever experienced—it was almost enough to scare him straight, or at least interested.

Above were situated several small holes in the ceiling, from which Cody could discern was some sort of whitish slime emanating. In the center of this miserable mess, and also above, was a giant eyeball, the pupil of which was facing down and shifting around frantically.

_Alright, so that's new,_ Cody considered bemusedly. _I'm not sure if that…thing is the reason that we're here—it sure looks like an alien—but I'm just not invested enough to really look into it. Hell, I'm tired of this tournament already…I think there's an exit on the opposite wall, so I'll just let Roxy and Junior sort out…_

_"We've got four supreme fighters…well, sort of three fighters and a corporeally-challenged optic nerve…lined up for you, world!"_ said the needlingly nerdy voice from the original Fourth Fighter tournament, suddenly, as Cody noted other eyes cropping up—those of cameras—all over the sides of the auditorium. _"This is gonna be one hell of a show!"_

_Damn it,_ the Travers said to himself, as he watched Roxy and Junior file in from the monastery hallway. _I guess I'm in for a pound, in for a round._

He then noticed the other two stretching out their muscles before starting, which even reprobate lowlives did before threatening innocents in Metro City. Following suit, Cody pulled his wrench and chains to their most taut, and did likewise with his arms and legs.

Just as he shook out all his cobwebs, the most awful of auditory anthems plagued the ears of everyone present:

WAYWARD-STRUMPET-GENDER-DETERMINATION-MOTIVATED-ABSOLUTIST-TOTALITARIAN-

REGIME-ENSCONCING-ANTHEM (Played _forte_ to the tune of the background music in the Ceiling Eyeball fight at the end of _Street Fighter 2010_'s Planet Two):

_Rox-y, Poi-son,_

_What's-their-gen-der,_

_I-don't-(expletive)-know,_

_(And) what- about-Can-dy,_

_Doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo…_

And sure enough, this chorus was being sung by two ninjas and a cyborg, as well as several Seth facsimiles and some Colombian natives who were tragically torn from their families and villages for the ever-essential endeavor of determining the gender of lowlives as scummy as the rest of the Mad Gear Gang. Bryan had trouble keeping up with all the "_doo-doo_"s that Raven and Yoshimitsu were handling just fine, the skull-faced Manji singing up as many octaves as he could for the sake of Kunimitsu's fate.

Elsewhere in the assembly hall, the pressure of the cameras all around goaded Cody and the Gears into action. Even the cucumber-cool Codemaster Travers himself started giving an eff once the cameras were on him, as although he really was an apathetic emeffer in general, he didn't want to sing his swan song on account of some asshole aliens. As such, he readied all his foreign object hardware while the Gears got psyched up even more.

"What's ouagh attaick stryatahgey?!" hollered Hugo Junior, as he noticed for the first time that the eye in the synthetic-cum-alien sky was accompanied not only by slots of dripping slime, but also by strange silvery aerial drones that pushed themselves in erratic vectors of directions.

"Whatever," Cody said, flipping his trademark knife in his hand. "I'll just shiv the thing and we'll be on our way." And with that, he stood directly underneath Phalliris and chucked the blade, point-first, due upward.

The knife glanced off the retina of the thing, which Cody didn't expect…but what absolutely no one saw coming was the sudden distension of the eyeball as it now creeped out of its socket, a large stalk still connecting it to its ceiling mooring.

"Aww, ya gotta be kiddin' me!" cried Roxy as she dodged the silver Seeker Drones darting her way. Her look of shock turned to one of disgust as she noted that the eyeball, in its new dynamism, was shifting around very suggestively and unbecomingly. It then fixed its retina directly upon the girl, and then its pupil dilated in the most ghastly of manners. "Is that thing…coming _on_ to me?!"

"Roaxy!" cried Junior, as he doulble-legged drop-kicked at a Seeker or two, and noted that some of the slime from above was beginning to pool around his feet, "Antidisco Manoivah Nineteen Ninedee Tree! NOW!" He punctuated this by lowering to one knee and cupping his hands for an alley-oop.

Only nodding slightly, the girl executed a couple of perfect forward handsprings, which from Roxy and Poison was always an erotic arousal to experience watching—then she inserted her heel into Junior's cupped hands and pushed herself upward.

As Cody uttered his trademark "Bingo"s while haymaking some drones, and Andore Junior clapped downward at some others in the style of his Father, Roxy was doing all she could to maintain leverage on the giant eyeball that swung around madly from the ceiling.

What the woman was trying to pull off (and really, pull out, of the socket in which the eye was moored) was a maneuver that the Mad Gears worked in several cities, Metro and beyond. In this rendition of the Capcomverse, disco was still raging into the eighties and nineties, much to the dismay of punks and others who rightfully despised this completely unmelodious genre. As such, in an attempt to garner goodwill, as well as just clout for their gang, Roxy and her sister(s? With Candy?) utilized their gymnastic talents to dismantle disco balls in various dance hall ceilings without even the use of a ladder—as long as there were an Andore on hand to give them a lift.

So too was Roxy applying her tremendous talent to remove another ball and add another notch to her impressively long leg-, er…list of demoralized disco spheres…but this one proved more of a challenge than anything.

The girl did all she could to hold onto the thing as it thrashed this way and that, and as the slime seemed to drip down a bit faster with every minute. Everything was so slippery and the dripping mucus continued accumulating, now up and around the knees of everyone on the ground. Below, Cody threw a cyboplasmically-charged clump of dirt (somehow, from the auditorium floorboards) at a drone, then at a nearby camera. Hugo Junior nabbed a Seeker and tossed it away with one hand, effortlessly.

The boys were starting to get a bit concerned, though, as the slime kept going, gathering now up to waist level on them…and, of course, on the spectating camera crews as well. "Can ya hurry it up a bit?" Cody, the uncaring ex of Jessica Haggar asked. "We're becoming effing _candles_ down here!"

"Awright! Awright!" was all Roxy could say at the second. She had to somehow reach higher…her hands originally enmeshed in the slime of the eyeball itself, the prost stretched a bit further, her sleek hand finding purchase upon the eyestalk itself. She noticed that this made Phalliris more frenzied than ever, but she didn't give up. In an attempt to maintain the position that she held, Roxy reached with the gripping right hand, and in all the oozy shifting around she ran her hand up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down the stalk. Meanwhile, the white slime from above dripped down at a exponentially faster rate.

Cody, Junior, and the camera folks were basically up to their necks now, and even the Seekers were frozen in the stuff. "ROAXY!"

"SHUT UP, JUNYEH!"

The way that the thing was gyrating around, it made Roxy think of the most uncomfortable ten to fifteen seconds of Sacha Baron Cohen's film _Bruno_. (Yes, _those_ ten to fifteen seconds).

Determined to end this, and put that disgusting image from the film out of her head, she reached with both hands to the segment which connected the eyestalk to its root, and she tugged with all her might, shouting as she went.

"BRUUUNOOOOOO!" (YANNNK)

GUMMA GUMMA GUMMA GUMMA GUMMA GADGEOOHDADGEOOHGADGE went the ensuing explosion.

The girl's fall was broken by the fact that the slime had reached about only a story's height below her. Once she regained her composure, and got the defeated eyeball out of her peripheral vision and her mind, she worked with both her stiletto pumps to dig out Junior, Cody, and the crews.

"Roaxy," Andore the Second said insistently as his massive frame was freed, "I thoat you were done with the whole affaih with Uncle Bruno Andore…I swoah never to tell Uncle Ugo about it, as ya seein' him now…his cloas' would go from gray to green like an evah-story-arcin' Credible Hulk if he found out…!"

At this the prost just sighed, and didn't even bother to explain. She was just exhausted, and mostly unmindful to the fact that there were eyes of shinobi watching her every move…looking for signs of manliness as against womanliness in her. They saw Roxy look back wistfully at the downed Phalliris, and acknowledged the fact that she even looked pained a bit, as if she could empathize with such a metaphorical castration…

…From this, Bryan, Yoshimitsu, and Raven all unanimously concluded that she must still be a man. "Determination on Roxy: PRE-OP," the stealthy Rodmannite reported through his headset, to his new superior.

The truth was that Roxy just felt very bad for those who were...intimately compromised in a physical sense. Even she herself, in this reality, was not completely cognizant as to what was going on "down there" with her sister Poison...so whenever she heard about or saw someone get it in the groin (and even when she had a hand in it, as she literally did with Phalliris just now) it just...resonated with her keenly, in a bizarre way.

Otherwise amidst all the warped wreckage in the place: "Hey, Andore," Cody said, to his ephemeral ally as they dusted all the white stuff on themselves, rather disdainfully, "you did a really good job with those kicks and throws against the Seekers."

"T'anks, kid!" The burly behemoth started beaming in the face of the success of his endeavor, as well as all the exposure this tournament brought.

Indeed, as Andore and the Code carried on, more and more of the camerapeople, at hearing the exchange, began to crowd the men.

Almost right into one of the paparazzi's camera eye peepers, Andore said back, "And you were amazing with that wrench and chain, when you took down a drone…almost bashing it in half, man. And that tornado uppercut that took down three of them?..."

"Well, I try."

"WAYYYT A MINNIT!"

Roxy had just finished up liberating a tiny camerawoman from her cummed-up imprisoning position when she started to see and hear all this. She couldn't believe it.

Executing another amazingly arousing forward handspring, she emerged just behind the two men. "You mean ta tell meee that I spaynt, like, foive to tain minnits, inadvoitently_ joicking off a goiant eyebawww,_ and _YOIY'RE TAIKIN' ALL DA CREDIT FOAW OUAH WIN?!_"

Without another word, and heedless to all the cameras still running, Roxy executed a flipping front kick that planted itself into Cody's striped chest, taking him down. When he tried to rise, she put him back down again soundly with a leaping elbow, then in the same breath grabbed at Hugo Junior and slapped him silly back and forth.

She then whipped out, out of nowhere, a riding crop similar to the one her sister iconically wielded, and thrust it in the direction of the supine men she just served. "YAW GON' JOICK THIS OFF NOW, AYAS IT GOES INTA BOAF YOAH ASSES!"

"That's enough, Roxy!"

The girl instinctively retracted the riding crop, impossibly into her shortest of shorts, as she noted the buzzcut Ken, Chun Li, and Xiaoyu entering into the auditorium. The Chunner, who spoke just now, continued: "We got the wins we needed…good job, all. It's on to Cameroon, now."

"WE GOAN TO CAYMEROON?!" Andore Junior exclaimed, from the gross ass floor. "INDA CARRY-BEAAN?!"

Cody just shrugged apathetically from his place on the ground. He shot a covert glance at Roxy, though, who slyly returned it. Could it be that, in time, the two might make a couple, a...RoxyCodone, so to speak? Only a fight round countdown timer would tell.

All the other attention was on the ignoramus in red who was the resident Andore. "No, you retarded roughhouse, it's in Africa," put in Xiaoyu, she answering the lummox's asinine question and inwardly itching to find out what her beloved was up to right this minute (she was only up to speed on his activities up to about six minutes ago). _As long as I can Skype my Jinny, I'm happy wherever we go,_ she added mentally. _Can't wait till Chuns is off the PDA again._

"Yes," said the crewcut Ken, as the Gears and Cody looked on whimsically, "You did a good job yourself, Chun Li, in determining the next leg of the tournament before it was even disclosed."

"Thank you, Ken. I managed to get some more intel on the organization behind this whole contest as well…the next letter is 'Aitch,' so so far we have 'Ess Aitch'…"

"Eye Tee!" exclaimed Ling from behind them. "Guys, it's Ess Aitch Eye Tee, the program that's supplying all the cybo energy to the Street Fighters!" She stamped in place a few times. "I mean, _FUCK_ you're thick!"

(Others in the crowd honestly shared Ling's take on the matter, as the seemingly beneficial group Ess Aitch Eye Tee seemed to be behind everything anymore.)

(Some people, meanwhile, would posit that this entire _story_ was "Ess Aitch Eye Tee.")

"We don't know that, Xiao," said the Chunster, as she adjusted some figures in her pocket computer. "The 'Ess Aitch' could also stand for Shadaloo, so Seth or Bison could be behind this as well."

"Do you think THAT looks like Seth or effing blinking BISON, with that dress and brown hair?!"

With this, Ling pointed to the image that was now broadcasting through the pupil of the defeated Phalliris. It was, once again, the woman with the chestnut hair, and the russet dress, and the one umber eye looking out from a face covered on the right side by the right hand, and the bottom half by the left hand. (Try this with your own hands at home...you don't need a russet dress or anything, though-even if you're a lady).

"You still pursue me, Ken and Fighters and Tekkenites?" said the muffled voice behind the hands. "Go home to Metro, or to fruity Frisco, and you won't get hurt."

As if all the warriors who had competed thus far hadn't been injured AT ALL.

"We'll retire to fruity ass Frisco when you're brought to justice…FOR STOCKARDDE'S MURDER!" exclaimed the indignant buzzcut, clenching his fists, his teeth, and his rear cheeks all at once. Everyone else present could tell this last clenching even through his body armor.

The apparent Ken hadn't told anyone the name of the Receptionist of yet, but yes, Stockardde was the name of that chestnut/russet/umber maiden of a manager of his office…it sort of slipped out, but Ken kept himself tight-lipped for now, so as not to let anything else slip out.

The woman on the other side of the screen blenched a second, then continued. "Alright, Ken, I'll even help. When you get to the deserts of Sanddune, or as you all call it, Cameroon, I will have a Flip Shield Capsule waiting for you."

A pause, and then the warriors all looked to one another. "That's it?!"

Everyone looked at Xiaoyu as she piped up. She always seemed to manage to steal the show-even from megalomaniacal would-be world conquerors.

"What?" said the mysterious russet-clad woman from beyond.

"Like, one power-up? That's all we're getting? That's like telling Mega Man that, 'Oh, if you take on like half a dozen robot masters, or telling Pac Man that if takes on like ten mazes filled with ghosts, oh, I'll throw in one large yellow container of energy for ya, for either of those fuckers, for the whole thing. Like, what the hell."

"EX EYE AY OH YOO, STOP IT!" cried Junior, completely failing to pronounce the Chinese girl's name anywhere near correctly, as he stewed still from the floor. "And, ay…I hoid that yoah boyfrien's noat toiying his shoos anymoah…the guy's switch'd to VEIL-CROAH dese daiys!"

_"JIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNN!"_ And that took care of Ling Xiaoyu, again, for now.

"Well, Kenny," Chun Li said, listlessly, to her argent-armored ally as she flipped her PDA shut, "it's time to strap ourselves in and pilot the Cybosphere across the pond."

The silver cybofighter to whom she just spoke gritted his teeth unnecessarily for the umpteenth time that day, then followed the Chinese crimefighter out of the monastic arena.

(Hours later, in the evening following the auditorium all-out…)

A pulsating purple shellfish-looking entity approached the downed remains of Phalliris, as it lay near death in the center of the monastery all-purpose room.

"Ssshhh Ssshhh Ssshhh [Translation: What happened to you?]"

"Hsssss Hsssss Hsssss [Translation: Those thugs kicked my ass, er…eye in.]"

"Ssshhh Ssshhh Ssshhh [Translation: Don't worry, Phally. I got the tail end of the fourth part of the tourney…supposedly the other guygirl prostitute—the one with the purply hair—she's slated for that fight, with her lover Hugo Andore Senior. I'll blast or smother them dead for certain.]"

"Hsssss Hsssss Hsssss [Translation: Please save the dignity of the superaliens…]"

And then Phalliris fell silent. The purple interloper cast its visual sensors down a second, unknowing as to whether her freakish BFF was expired or just unconscious…but she swore revenge at any rate, as did the supposed great crewcut hero of 2010, and then floated away from the scene.

[Poignant piano chord from end of certain Tekken 5/DR midtournament cutscenes]: _Da-doo…_

END PART TWO


	3. Chapter 3: Africa (Sanddune)

PART THREE: AFRICA (OR "SANDDUNE")

CHAPTER SEVEN: SECOND PACK OF 'LUDES (INTERLUDES, THAT IS)

A lone Kurdi nomad guided a camel across the shifting sands of Cameroon's desolate desert, the man hoping to get back to the others in his tribe before noon, when the heat of the day would of course reach its zenith. He thought to himself as he went that the most unnerving part of his day would just involve the tension over whether he would get back to his brethren in time.

The nomad never counted on witnessing a strange, gigantic silvery-blue sphere, crashing at what have been one hundred thousand kilometres, in his estimation, against the side of a mountain nearby. There was no way anything, or especially anyone, could have survived such an impact.

What the man saw was something so much more than he expected to see. It was…

…not so much epic; more like epidemic.

Just like the epidemic that The Receptionist, Stockardde, had told the supposed "Ken" about at the conclusion of his space adventure in 2010. That alleged "outbreak," however, was only a rash of wayward invasive off-planet machinery such as the aforementioned Hunter and Seeker Drones.

No one saw it coming, though, that the Drones were merely scouts—as were the Red Reamer, Basher, Androboy, and Antense in 2010—they all checking out Earth for its suitability for cosmic conquest. When those superaliens splashed down and sampled us, they found us suitable for conquest.

And now the second epidemic was here, and it was so much more pervasive, so much more perilous, so much more pernicious.

And now it would require the strongest and most soulful of Street Fighters, Final Fighters, and Tekkenites to put down this incoming armada of anomalies.

Fighters with flair, with spirit, with…

…completely uninspired personas—just like effing tired and cliché twin Arcade Edition (and yes, SF Three Refugee) archetypes Yun and Yang.

"Oh, man!" cried the dime-a-dozen, penny-a-population Yun as he whipped out his skateboard and pumped right out of the Sphere wreckage to speed into the nearest cave, covering the unsure sandy surface underboard as if it were just ordinary concrete. Meanwhile, the weathered nomad, who had covered the same desert sands for more than a score of years, did all he could to steady his wagon's rickety-ass wheels.

"I just love a good…"

Aw, hell, this author just threw up in his mouth before he could finish the overly ordinary opening line that Yun always wielded.

Even the beefy, robust announcer of the Super Arcade Fourth Fighting Tournament didn't seem to give a cybo cat's crapola about all this. _"HERE COMES THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY! THE WINNER OF THIS ONE WILL HAVE HIS NAME ENGRAVED IN THE…AWW, WHO AM I KIDDING? THIS MATCH WILL BE FORGOTTEN EVEN BEFORE IT'S OVER! I'M JUST GETTING PAID BY ESS AITCH EY…ER, CAPCOM TO COMMENTATE ON THIS GARBAGE!"_

Of course, obligatorily Yang pumped out on his own set of trendy-ass in-lines, peppily pushing his own weary phrase that this author cannot even recall right now and will not bother to research. It's something along the lines of "It's time to get involved in a Street Fighter round!" or something bleah or other like that.

The Red Reamers who were assigned to this match could not be any less excited about all this, either. The dragon trio had read up on the Y Twins on the way over before the match, and they took turns drying each other's tears at the prospect of lapsing into boredom-induced comas during the impending so-called "brawl."

_YUN,_ they read, in the computer abstracts: _HOBBIES: Skateboarding, Martial Arts, Being Generic._

_YANG: HOBBIES: Rollerblading, Martial Arts, Being Generic._

"Are we havin' fun yet?!" emptily emitted Yun as he jump-slid forward and struck a Reamer full in the bread basket with a forceful punch. Unlike the encounter the crewcut, alleged Ken had in 2010 at this juncture, the order of enemies would go two dragons, then one instead of the other way around. The first pair of Reamers would have no chance against Yun and Yang generally…but not from lack of skill, but rather of wherewithal.

The dragon demon facing Yun didn't have nearly the same level of oomph as did the one back in Frisco as, one, the venue here was so much more desolate and two, so were the Fighters they faced. Yun then did some kind of windmilling with his fists, given a trippy visual effect through cyboplasmic interferences, to culminate in another forceful forward punch, and then he did a double-handed shove move that landed the Reamer on his rear. The thing didn't even bother to fight back because he embraced the deathurge so badly out of his tedium.

"The party's just getting' started!" vacantly voiced Yang as he perpetrated a slashing forward cyboplasmically-enhanced slap on his own Reamer. He then ducked back, then rolled forward toward his enemy and then perfected a handspring kick into the face of his demon. Finally, Yung finished with a small leap onto the chest of his foe, then a launch backward off of his enemy while kicking the Reamer in the kisser.

"Alright, we're done," said the one dragon demon to the other, overly determined to end Yang's "party" asap; as such, an instant later the two fell face-forward. Yun and Yang looked one to the other and shrugged; never had they put down opponents so quickly.

The fact was, however, that the Reamers were not defeated, or certainly dead; they were just enmeshed in the gratifying oblivion of somnolence. Minutes later, when each fully embraced a state of slumber, the twins felt a bit more than insulted when they heard the snoring involved with sleep, instead of the sighing or screeching connected with defeat.

The third dragon then dropped down from a point somewhere high up in the cave, but before either of the Y Boys could do anything more, the far wall to the right in the cave exploded open and the Hong Kong whoevers skated away skittishly. Through the rubble first emerged a fist…and then the remainder of the fierce man who wielded it.

"Aww, THANK YOU!" cried the third foe, it now hovering gleefully as it beheld the incoming frame of Feng Wei. "Those two Beijing bobos, the only thing remotely cool about them was that they were related to OG Street Fighter 1 Lee! And even THAT's pretty sucky! Like, I really need to be put up against the Fledgling Fighters of the Fatass Family! I'm SO glad I won lots on who would be the first two Reamers to go…I got the best for last!"

The monstrous martial artist who emerged, he fancying himself part dragon as well, so it was rather appropriate, this whole matchup—he was more than nonplussed at this warm reception. "I'm going to drag your maize-ass wings through your urethra," Feng stated in his native Chinese dialect.

"Still beats being bored into the next blue moon," the Reamer replied, understanding the risks involved but not caring a bit out of boredom. "Let's just the fuck GO!"

Feng began by dodging the incoming tail charge of the Reamer, then he ran up behind it while it was retreating and thrust himself at it with a forward glide back-first, his shoulder blades bashing into the side of the beast and taking him down to the sands underfoot. Feng then jumped in and thrust a downward fist into the chest of the dragon while it lay supine a second. Once it managed to a hovering position once more, Feng drew it in with one arm, then flung it back out onto a position facing the ceiling once more.

The Reamer realized at this point that it had to get serious, so once it was up again it retreated by taking a route of several shunting slants back up towards the ceiling of the cave, where it was hiding before. _Let's see,_ it thought as it looked down upon Feng, whose return glare seemed to be somewhat glazed over…as if looking not only at the maize-maroon dragon itself, but also something…beyond it?

_How should I approach thi…_

[WHHOWW BOOOOOM]

The poor dragon monster never saw the giant-squid-sized Azazel bearing down on him from above—which was understandable as the cheapass creature always just teleported, or rather, just spanged in like that (at least teleporting, per se, might involve some kind of aura, or brimstone, but this asshole just "appears" in all the time) and slammed down on the ground, knocking down all wildlife in a two hundred-mile radius. Feng too was brought down to his back as the freakish purple bird-dragon plonked down onto the sand, ever so awkwardly.

Before the Reamer could even conceive of registering in his mind to do anything at all, Azazel already whipped him around with his tail, stomped this way and that all over the red dragon, caused effing claws to come up out of the sand to damage the demon further, sent out weird bat-things to envelop the enemy and hurt it further, and rolled all around on top of his opponent. It was pretty safe to say at this point that the last of the three Reamers was completely defeated, and far, far more deceased than his brothers were asleep.

Guess it wasn't so great to have received the lot that the Reamer did after all.

"Tekken-Announcing-God damn it," Feng whined, as he looked over to the greatly gargantuan lavender dragon in front of him. "You rock-candy cockblocker. I oughta tell that luchador, who fought the other Reamer, about you…he'd stick your oversized Pop-Rocks ass into an enormous microwave, and we'd all happily watch your head explo—"

But Azazel had already beaten Feng Wei to the idea, as the dragon had already trained his cheapassedly gratuitous beak laser on the mandragon's head and basically blasted it off.

Yes, the villainous Feng did survive the devastation, but he was worse for wear—and not ready to pummel another cliffside with his dragon fist—for several Majesties of Iron Fists to come.

Elsecave, in a veritable Al-Qaeda apartment complex of caverns…

Balrog and Sagat sighed slowly and ruefully at the pair of partners with whom they were placed. They had heard of these two before from various reports of Mad Gear monkey shines, and they were certain that they wouldn't bring anything to the table, er…unstable tableau of sands before them.

"Don't worry!" scammed Damnd as he leaped around from space to space on the surface all around—as, judging at least from his performance in the first Final Fight, he wasn't too good at just effing walking around, "I have a great plan for us. Just wait and see."

"That Dominican drug dealer's got nothin' going on," mused Sodom disdainfully as he gazed through his perpetual goblinlike mask at his allies. "My katanas are where it's at, and they'll get us through whatever Target's comin' up."

Said Target now strolled in—_slid_ in was more like it, as along with the others, Sodom stared aforementioned-goblin-mask to alien-mask at the…er, mask that just shot across the sands. It careened directly towards their position, making them all jump, then upon reaching one of the cavern walls it careened on back, causing another small series of leaps to ensue.

"Yeah, now you a-speakin' ma language!" Damnd declared as he leapt around with utmost glee, taking great joy in the fact that everyone was jumping around as uselessly as he was for the moment.

"Well, you style yourself the master-plan-smith," grunted Balrog roughly, "you go on ahead, and take this thing on first! Go on, just grab that mask and show it what for!"

Damnd must have been flying on his own product, as he just continued jumping around like an effing idiot while the mask moved all around. The visor streaked left, Damnd jumped right, and vice versa. Finally the bohemian brute just executed a grand flip off onto one of the strange hornlike shell platforms above the others and just fucking sat there. "FWHEEEEEEEEE!" he whistled, and looked at the remaining fighters.

"What?" cried Sagat, utterly bereft of patience.

"You my crew!" Damnd shouted down. "Get that thang for me!"

At this Sagat sneered, and then he executed a tiger uppercut that broke through the shell platform seat above, and brought the Dominican dunderhead unceremoniously back down to the sand.

"Go…the fuck…ahead," the Tiger Thai murmured, shoving Damnd back toward the Target.

The first-level fool did nothing but clench his fists, shake them up and down, and continue laughing in abject idiocy as the mask ushered itself up to him in an ominous Tremors-like fashion along the sand. Finally, Damnd found himself standing face-to-visor with the thing as it stood, now heading off a strange silken shroud and vomiting a giant green snake right into his face.

The other three fighters didn't even bother to help the moron as the serpent sent him reeling onto the ground, choking on its leathery thickness. Within another few seconds the useless boss was out for the count, and it was most likely for the best.

"Rather be shorthanded that go with that shithead," said Balrog as he pumped his gloves, then charged up an uppercut that sent the serpent coming off of Damnd into segments.

"Let me go next!" piped up Sodom, all too excited to work his katanas this afternoon. Leerily he circled the mask as it slid through the sand once more…then once the thing rose again, he sidestepped the snake that emanated forth, and tried to insert one of his swords in a hard thrust into the place where the false Guile would habitually store his sunglasses for an evening. Sagat and Balrog couldn't believe it, but Sodom tried it again, this time with both katanas, when the monster rose a second time.

"What?" the sucky second boss of the first of Final Fights said in protest. "Y'all know what my name is."

There was just no living up to the katana-wielding wrestler's namesake with an intangible-alien-creature such as this. The jutte-jostling jerkoff could find no purchase with his blades, and even he had a feeling that he was about to have yet another date with defeat. At least it was nothing new or shocking for the semblance of a scrapper.

Nothing was more shocking, though, than when the creature came in for a third haunting against the Mad Gear. The fighter just stood there, waiting with his head down. Sodom was confident that no one could hurt him in this state, as indeed, no Haggar or Travers could touch him while he made this stance for some reason.

Unfortunately for the boorish boss, his foe was otherworldly, and played by other video game rules. So Sodom just stood there, not even making eye…er, mask contact, while the visor rose up once again, burped out its serpentine beast, and brought the doofus down into a state of strangulation, just as with Damnd.

"Well," said Balrog to Sagat, as he spun and bashed the second snake, "it's up to us—the _real_ Capcomian Fight folks—now."

The two agreed on their plan, which still abided by the one-on-one tournament rules. Balrog continued to hang back and beat down the serpents who slithered his way, while Sagat, who dodged them in the first place, gave some elbows and knees and took his tiger shots at the mask itself while it sat atop the shroud. "What, dear fellow, is your name, anyway?" Sagat queried the alien while he threw both arms into a potent high tiger shot which, especially given its cybo enhancement, seared straight through a snake and snapped the mask's moorings back a bit upon its final resting impact. The visor remained silent, though, through it all.

"You don't seem to hear us very well," said the vicious Vegas boxer in the background as he grabbed at one more snake coming his way. In a most unlikely fashion, he held the thing in one hand, then headbanged upon it, the cybo coming through the boxer's flaking dandruff this time. "What- is- your- motha's- effin- name?!" he barked, one syllable per bang.

"Sss…Sss…SSSLAGMAaaa…" the serpent finally slurred out as the thing died out, at the same time that Sagat grabbed his shrouded enemy, held it in place for a second, and brought a knee up and a crushing elbow down on the mask at the same time.

"Sorry to say, then, Slagma," said Balrog, tossing the useless alien animal carcass aside, "but we all just slugged ya."

Sagat looked down grimly at the visor at his feet, it now a paler shade of bluish black than it was before. Apparently the arcane alien magicks flowed out of it upon its defeat. "Hey Bally," he said to his old Bison-Underboss buddy, "I think we found ourselves the perfect practical joke for ol' Vega's mask menagerie."

Balrog pumped his gloves together again, more than primed to punk his old prettyfaced pal.

Finally, for this segment, just outside another cavern a few clicks away…

Roger Junior was determined to be known as the toughest Junior to have emerged from this entire tournament. _Fuck the overbearing Andre bully with the hooker on his arm,_ the kangaroo thought feverishly in this desert heat.

There were all sorts of purple rolly peckerheads outside this cave, and Rog was PO'ed that he couldn't have been inside where all the real action was. He was relegated, instead, to Balrogging around, referring to the fact that as in the last fight, he was the one who had to take care of the needling underlings who either preceded or surrounded the actual boss of the encounter. Roger knew that he could beat the ass of that roustabout Miguel who was indoors, as well as that twisty teleporting guru from the Capcomverse, were he given the opportunity.

Instead, there were just these purply…Crustacs, or whatever they were called. They were allegedly invincible once they started barreling towards an opponent in ball form, but Rog didn't give a dingo's dildo about it. One came his way, and the kanga executed a spinning punch that knocked the circly Crustac off balance, and then the marsupial's followup downward punch laid it into the ground. When another tried to attack from overhead, he just responded with the same mega-uppercut that sent his father Senior into space, and sure enough, there was now a small purple sphere which was once a functioning Crustac just floating in the Exosphere.

This gave Junior a little idea, regarding the other crusty enemy coming his way. Once the last of the Crustacs rolled in his direction, Rog grabbed the thing until it uncurled, then he took it aside, face low down to the ground, and kicked it several times in the kisser, punctuating the move with the harsh tail in the face for good measure. Then, while the enemy lay defeated on the sterile sand…

"Ikk-Ikk-Ikk-Ikk-Ikk!" ("Where the _fuck_ is my father,") the cute-seeming kangaroo demanded bloodthirstily.

"I don' know what y're talkin' bout…" pleaded the Crustac, desperately attempting to curl back into its supposedly invincible ball—but Roger's kang-ulation hold on its throat kept the thing from changing again.

"Ikk-Ikk-Ikk-Ikk-Ikk!" ("I sent him to the stars at the end of the Fifth Tourney—then he came back down. Then Mama sent him up again at the end of Six—and he didn't come back down. He's at the last leg of all of this, isn't he.")

"All right! All right!" cried the crummy Crustac. "Yes…and Senior…well, there's some others involved in what he's been doing...you may...may not find your father at the end of this...the other Roger...s...behind some of…urk…"

"Ikk-Ikk-Ikk-Ikk-Ikk!" ("What?! Tell me! Tell me, you balled-up bitch of a bastard!")

But the enemy fell still and silent in Roger Junior's hands.

What was his father's role in this whole, cruel tournament…?

It was alright. The fact of the matter was that Junior was actually, for the first time, fighting all on his own here—and not in the pouch of his mother. Mama was already slated for the fifth and final leg of all of this—and boy, would she and her husband be in for another hell of a family reunion then, apparently.

Within the cavern, Miguel and Dhalsim loped around for a few minutes, after the former brawled and the latter organically stilt-walked his way past the strange scorpion-taily barrier things inside the cave before the scheduled Target appeared.

"Where is this cybo _cabrón?!_" Miguel demanded hotly, the steam welling within him of a greater temperature than the remainder of Cameroon.

"We must meditate and focus before the oncoming conflict," admonished his Indian associate, Dhalsim now sitting cross-legged near the top of the end of the long passage. "It is advantageous to us that the Target has not yet appeared."

"I don't care if he's humanoid, or a giant _cojone_ like those purple things we left that giant ratón out there to tussle with. I'm going to rip him apart like the effing Red Gentleman that I am."

"I would be more discretionary in the use of my power if I were you, _Señor Caballero Rojo_," said Dhalsim, "as someone such as I, who wields the fires of the Yoga, knows that one with wayward energies such as yourself will take to burning out far too quickly…YAAAAAGGGH!"

Miguel, who was heretofore just listening to the elder from India and not giving him the dignity of eye contact, suddenly turned up to see Dhalsim rising up, slowly yet agitatedly, from a fire that was literally lit underneath him…which he himself did not cause.

As the two warriors watched the eerie blue flame rise up, then burn out, each man carefully jumped away as another flame began to rise up under Dhalsim's and Miguel's feet from where they presently stood.

"AH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!" cried a very frightening humanoid thing that suddenly appeared before the two warriors. It was like some kind of pig person wrapped in a purple straitjacket, who did some funky bowing before phasing in and out of reality through some weird expressionist-painting-sort of swirl.

The bizarre laughter continued all around the two now-very-worked-up men as the inflection spoke again, a second later: "Neither of you will be able to withstand the flame-boyant fusillade taken to you by none other than…

"TELEPORK!"

And then the inflection's stated name seemed to melt across the bottom of the cavern as apparently the creature moved to another part of the cave, taking its rising and falling flames with it.

"How we gonna _chinga_ this _chingador?!_" burst out Miguel, striking out at some stalagmites in the cavern out of frustration. It was all the two noble combatants could do to continue to avoid the azure fires as they went, as well.

"The only way," said Dhalsim, brusquely, "is to beat the boorish boar at his own game."

And with that, the guru folded up again into crosslegs and himself disappeared from view.

("You are going to stop with this jumping in and out nonsense, right now!")

("AGH! How did you get here? I didn't know that I wasn't the only one who could 'pork around the place!")

("I'm going to 'pork you, RIGHT NOW!")

And you thought that only the past Roxy and upcoming Poison chapters would be so risque.

Dhalsim then reappeared, right above Miguel, with Telepork's floppy left ear firmly entrenched within his fist. The guru then grabbed the porker by the throat and downwardly punched the pig on the head from above, with cyboplasmic pizzazz behind it, sending the Target right down at Miguel's feet.

"Quieres fuego?" the Red Gentleman sneered viciously. "Voy a darte fuego!"

He then slugged the thing hard, cyboplasmically to boot, in the straitjacketed stomach, causing Telepork to grab at his own face for some reason (as that was always his animation for taking damage—even a mosquito bite on the arm would cause him to make like he was being facially disfigured). Miguel then followed up by ducking down, placing both his hands on the ground, and kicking to the side, catching the demon again in the midsection and sending his palms back to his porky features. Finally Miguel grabbed the Target by the shoulders and tossed him around—right back into the arms of Dhalsim.

At this point, the Yoga dignitary that was Dhalsim was far from dignified, as the thought of another upstaging his pyrotechnic and teleporting talents was enough to send him into a tizzy. "You DARE steal my act?" he said, in fact, as he threw the thing again to the ground, then corkscrewed his own way down ever so slowly, but his kick striking the enemy in his hoggy head. So stunned, Telepork stood there as Dhalsim then took him down once more with a sliding kick, then one of his usual longish limb punches or three. Finally, the Dhalled-up one dialed up the heat with some Yoga flame that made Telepork become set alight—in whitish-blue fire, for some reason (perhaps having to do with his own ability to generate such colored flame).

"You haven't yet peeped the last 'pork from me!" the Target literally squealed as he did his expressionist vanish for a second, then just exploded.

"The hell was all that about, anyway?!" said one warrior to the other.

The latter simply sat down on a long crag, kicked his legs up against a nearby rock, and comforted the other hotheaded journeyer with some rough-sounding, yet really soothing words. "Don' wanna burn y'self out too quickly, my meditative hombre," said Miguel, now as cool as a _churro_ en el _cielo_. "Jus' meditate and focus it all on out. _Qué será, será,_ you know?"

Within the coming minutes, Miguel managed to calm down the Dhals so that the latter was content and engaging in his overhand happy claps of round-won victory in no time.

CHAPTER EIGHT: TARGET VERSUS CRIMSON VIPER, VEGA, ZAFINA (AND SOME OTHER MATTERS ALSO)

"So you won't tell Him because…you have this reputation to uphold, is that it?"

"Clint, I'm not just an announcer. I'm an American symbol."

"Well, like, so am I!"

"No, you're more like an icon. That's different. An icon can be…rough around the edges. Tough. Evil, even; sometimes especially. A symbol, no…that has to be pure. And there still is a lot of America which is Judeo-Christian God-fearing, so it has to be you."

"My Round-Announcing God…"

Mister Eastwood didn't like this one bit. One time, he had many fistfuls of dollars, and some more and more coming his way, with every announcement he made regarding rounds in the Dark Resurrection Iron Fist Tournament. Of course, his participation in that whole contest earned him the wrath of the Almighty per se—and this just because the name "Resurrection" was appended to the tourney's name.

But then there were other episodes of bad blood between the Man With No Name and the Man Upstairs. Conflicts regarding who was going to call the next match led to shouting matches themselves between the two announcers, and before they knew it, they were both thrown out of the contending and replaced with the implosive milquetoast from Regular SF4 or the huffy buffoon from the Super Arcade one. The TDR and the T6 hawkers weren't going to stand for this much longer…but it was Clint and Steve now who were the most exasperated.

"What can I say? He's old; he's tired."

"So am I, Steve."

"As am I! But the One On High…he's in a class all his own. You heard his weary old "GET READY-Y-Y" in Soilmound! It didn't even make toucans take wing in the Amazon! All-powerful my starred and striped ass.

"He needs to be put to pasture, Clint—and you know you're the one to do it."

Eastwood grit his teeth a bit harder than when he usually did, which was 368 hours a week. "Promise that I'll call the next three chances we have."

"Alright…deal."

The Captain watched The Outlaw Josey Wales walk on out of the desert tent in which they were situated, the former knowing that the latter would not, for once, survive the standoff in which he was about to engage.

The stodgy superhero then shrugged, cleared his throat, and announced the next fight, once all the opponents were in position.

Sands across the way in Cameroon, there existed a steppe which gave way to so much erosion over time that there were constant sandfalls—not unlike waterfalls, in places such as Soilmound just now. The messiness of this all was most unbecoming to individuals such as Crimson Viper, who was usually all business in her enhanced suit and as such was used to more…urban environs in her battles—or at least nothing nearly as far removed as what she was facing now in the sandiest dunes to make the locale live the most up to its tournament-dubbed namesake.

Vega, too, was rather flustered by all of this; he would be far more at home behind a chainlink at his favorite cantina. (Matters could be worse for the conceited Castilian, though, which at the moment he had no idea—he could be behind the miserable visor now known to his Bisonic buddies as the "Slagmask"—and were they ever determined to make his existence awful with that later on.)

The third among the warriors, however, was much more comfortable with this atmosphere. Zafina danced with the wind, and reveled in the warm air which visited her perfumed cheeks. She always made the desert her home…though there was something about it especially today that made it just right for the warrior.

"Sister, I wish I could haul about as healthily as you in this heat," mused the Viper to the Middle Eastern maiden as she checked some of the settings on her suit's internal weaponry.

"You could, my child…if you just shed yourself of that awful obsidian encumbrance you have all about your body."

If Vega were on a less…homogenized batting team, he would have certainly, eagerly agreed with Zafina on Crimson's casting off her superfluous clothing. As it was, he cursed himself and this entire contest for his not being placed in the San Fran "Streetcrown" segment of the tourney.

"There's no possibility of my parting with my internal ordnance, sorry." The agent then checked some information on her wristwatch organizer. All the Viper had to do was finish this mission within the next thirty-five minutes, and then she would hijack the next Cybosphere in time to pick Lauren up from play practice. She just hoped her daughter could hop on the thing as it passed by at all its tens of thousands of per-hour units of velocity.

Goodness knew that the tyke's regular bus driver almost drove as fast…

"You know," put in the Spanish seducer as he willowed on over to his Crimson Capcom companion, "sometimes it doesn't necessarily take all that…technology to put down a Target. Sometimes you only need a good, gay Toledan blade—or three—to get the job done."

The Viper grabbed Vega by the shoulders as if she wanted to knee him in a most intimate place.

"Look: Queerverine," she said, "my suit and I are as one. I am completely nude, basically, without it." And while this comeback might have aroused any other warrior around into oblivion, Zafina was too absorbed in the atmosphere, and Vega too mired in his own magnificence, to have her suggestive statement result in any effect whatever.

Moments later, as Vega continued to adjust his claws, Crimson her cybernetic clothes, and Zafina her scant sari…

"GEHHHEHHT REHEHEADY FOR THE NEHHEXT BAHHATTLE…" (CHAWWW)

And, as if to punctuate the slick, almost sleazy-sounding delivery of the Uber-American Captain, a very sssssnakey sound issued from up and around a rock not too far away.

_ "Ssssss…we can sssssenssssse one of our brethren in thisssss arena…"_

"Uf," cried the oleaginous Spaniard as he heard the hiss of the oncoming Target, "are we going to have to contend with the same Reamer things that Lee's nephews here, and the Dragon-Lee knockoffs in Frisco, had to deal with?" The Japanese Balrog wanted to go to Golden Gate city for the ambience, nor for the altercations that occurred there, which to him were overly trite. Vega was honestly hoping for a much more meaningful mashup this afternoon.

To his dismay, what appeared was not some haughty humanoid horror, nor even a diving dragon demon—rather, what came to plague these warriors in particular was a host of five flying scarlet serpents, the reptiles resembling something from a freaking Snake cell phone game. "This…_this_ is what we get?!" the Bison underboss couldn't help but cry out.

The lead serpent, its head eyeless but with an overbiting, chomping mouth—somewhat like an oversized red version of a great, yellow storied pellet-nomming hero from Zafina's home of the Namcoverse, sans eyes—this snake turned its head in the general vicinity of Vega, and continued to slither through the atmosphere as it spoke: "Yesssss…you are impresssssive, with your purple homage to our brethren all over your chessssst…but the mere likeness upon your breassssst doesssss not make you one of usssss."

Vega didn't know what to say to that as the lead snake crawled through the air, away from him. The beautiful bastard wasn't used to such rejection. "_Que en el infierno?!_" he cried, a Latino now almost as livid as the Red Gentleman from the round before. "I will not brook this snubbing snobbery!"

The ruby reptiles trailing behind the lead snake said nothing to the jilted jackass, but simply followed their point python as it then approached the suited special agent with the scarlet mane. "Yesssss," the lead Target hissed, as it stopped just before the woman, "now, _you_…we have finally found you. It hasssss been foretold that we would encounter you at lassssst. You mossssst definitively are one of ussssssssss."

The foreshadowingly-named Crimson Viper perked her head up at this. "Go to Hell, you slimy aspholes! I'm not one of you!"

The lead serpent drew its head down slightly, and for the first time that minute Lauren's mother realized that the thing, if it had a pair of eyes, would not have been making eye contact until now. "We were not talking…to you."

Suddenly Crimson Viper was completely jerked off her feet and onto her back. She lay there a second, and thought instinctively to check all her devices to ensure that they were still online…but then the very follicles which helped fuel her powerful pride had, in their lengthy lavishness, impulsively began to pull her along the sands at will, with the woman owning them having no control over it whatsoever.

"This isn't…I can't…AGH!

"AAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

_"Free…yesssss, I must get free to you, my family!"_ cried a voice above the face of the Viper as her very hair suddenly sprang to the life that it should have had all of these years.

"Yesssss!" cried the lead red snake, "we have finally found our brother, the Ssssseventh Ssssscarlet Ssssserpent!"

"_Dónde está el serpiente sexto?_" queried the aforementioned Queerverine, asking regarding the whereabouts of the Sixth Scarlet Serpent while his Crimson Capcomian teammate was being tugged haplessly along the sands this way and that, her 'do trying as hard as it could to ditch her.

"Check out the nexssssst event," said the lead lancehead, barely paying Vega any mind as it watched the snake-maned special operative being dragged around, screaming her head off while the jaded-jaunty-truck-driver-on-LSD music for this level/battle played in the background.

The saucy Spaniard had about enough of all of this, and although he was not the most fervent fan of the vivacious human Viper, he felt he needed to help her out—if only to keep the warriors, and the free Earth, alive long enough in this tournament for him to look at himself lovingly and longingly in the mirror another day.

What he found to be of great assistance was this enigmatic…Flip Shield Capsule that he uncovered while filing his claw on a mysterious round rock. Once he was endowed with it, he found that his own flips were imbued with a special kind of energy.

It wasn't as if it were really anything incredible, though, given the guy's skills as they were.

He started out by executing his rickety roll forward with a claw straight out in front of him to punctuate, but the snake at which he aimed had already slithered through the air molecules before him and away from his lethal triple points. Vega then rushed at another serpent close by, and even managed to get it in between his Palmolively perfect hands, but before he could pull off the backdrop that he so wanted to initiate, the reptile Target simply floated from his grasp and up and away as well.

"_Mierde!_" the murderous mother known as Vega viciously cussed. "What will it take to do in you diamondback douchebags?!"

And then, watching the lady Viper as she trawled past him on her back, the woman still screaming her lungs out while her hair lobbied for its liberation, Vega found his specific mark.

It should be much easier to make a bead on one of the things while it was moored to a specific anchoring. As such, Vega carefully calculated the trajectory of his upcoming flightpath, and figured exactly where Crimson Viper the Fighter's figure would be positioned in another twenty seconds.

Some bizarre little fish skeletons jumped around his airspace while he prepared to rescue Crimson, but he fended them off with his Flip Shield. It did appear to come in handy after all…but still, for the Russet Lady to have made such a fuss over it…it wasn't that major.

Ready now, the Veginator launched out towards a nearby crag; having planted his dated, locust-eaten loafers onto the ledge for long enough, he then pushed off, into the arid space of the Cameroonian afternoonian air:

"DUUUUUUHHHHHH!" (At least that's what Vega's diving cry sounded like in earlier iterations of his fighting experiences).

And the Spaniard landed precisely at the side of the woman just as she was being dragged by, the clawed underboss shunting down abruptly with his three-bladed weapon, cyboplasm shucking out from the sides of his body as he landed, he now expertly, basically surgically severing the snake at the part at which it met Crimson's scalp.

Finally the lady's long body bucked and bounced to a halt as her once-Siamesely-connected serpent, which sought so ardently to extricate itself from her head, now slithered away. For once, Vega's dreaded dropdown claw move produced a positive effect. Or so it seemed.

"_Tú estás libre ahora, mi…_"

"IDIOT!"

And this last was endstopped with the sharpest cyboplasmically-trumped-up wrist-shocker charge, as the Crimson Viper, now as crewcut as our supposed Ken, rammed into the Bisonic underboss with the devices in her sleeves full force, causing a number of volts approaching the Cybosphere's average speed figure to course through him.

She looked disdainfully down at what was now the Vegetator as his eyes rolled pinballingly in his head. "_No…comprendo,_" he said, wistfully, he now struggling for consciousness.

"I don't care if my hairdo was actually an infernal serpent, Tekken-6-Announcer-damn it!" the Crimson lady cried. "It was still part of me! Like my suit! Now I'm like naked without it!"

Again, no arousal ensued from anyone present. But you know what happens in anime-like games when a woman is caught by a man in the altogether, even accidentally (and here, even metaphorically).

Without another sound she pounded her other fist down hard into the earth, crushing the Castilian into a cruel unconsciousness. She then let fly with one of her fiery spinkicks, the flames flourishing into the open air even though she knew that Vega was too down and low to be directly on the receiving end of it. "Choke on the smoke, sleepyass," was all she said from over her shoulder as she knew the attack's ensuing fumes overhead would give the supine, still Vega anything but pleasant dreams.

Crimson then turned her attention to the panorama of desert dunes before her, and she had to lift her golden-hued glasses slowly off and above her eyes at what she saw next.

"Christ and my daughter on a playdate…"

The woman expected to see the Tekkener with her being overrun at the moment by five—and now, she surmised ruefully, six snakes coiling all around—but to her shock the things were lovingly curled up all around the ground nearest to the Middle Eastern madam in abject admiration. Indeed, Zafina was in all her glory as she contorted in ever so complex configurations, kicking out into the air before her in some weird spin-shift position, then executing a very strange, appropriately snakelike chop-slap into the atmosphere, then pulling off a kick in which her foot sailed over her head almost impossibly. It was all so…slitheringly serpentine.

And the Six Scarlet Serpents loved every second of it.

"We have here a bonusssss," cried the lead snake as he proudly rose up and draped himself along the shoulders of Zafina. "We have found a sssssissssster in addition to our long lossssst ssssseventh brother. Thisssss isssss a mossssst gloriousssss turn of eventsssss indeed."

What was most, almost terrifyingly frightening was that Zafina didn't seem to mind the situation at all. It was funny, too, perhaps apropos really; she always used her combat skills to defend a royal family grave...and here was this arena now, basically a glorified plot in the ground itself, what with its sinking-sand nature, a virtual grave for the fighters should they fail.

With what the girl was doing at present, though, it looked as if failure-and even fighting in the first place-were out of the question.

"Come, my Ssssscarpentsssss," said the Tekkenite to her new, cold-blooded compatriots, calling them by their preferred contractive name "Scarpents," for "Scarlet Serpents." "If you give us warriors the win for today, I will tell you about a dissssstant relative of yoursssss in my universsssse. Actually, it isssss an entire family. You mussssst hear the talesssss of Pac-Man and hisssss entire clan…"

And with that, the woman crawled off, again in a very lizardy, snakey way, leading the eager, compliant chompy-ass cerise copperheads off into the distance as the woman known as Maya, the Crimson Viper, was left to scratch her head quizzically over the downed form of her fellow, Spanish Street Fighter.

"Ah, well, Lauren needs me now anyway," she said to herself, checking her watch for the quintillionth time today. "Just as well that the lady took those…'Scarepants' snake things with her, especially since we managed to get the win along with it."

She then ran a hand along her much-breezier-now scalp and sighed. "It'll grow back," she told herself, "and hopefully, next time I'll keep it more trimmed so that it doesn't get a mind…or a life…or an effing _family_ of its own."

CHAPTER NINE: TARGET VERSUS RUFUS, THUNDERHAWK, ADON, LEI WULONG (CANDY GUEST STARS)

"I gotta figure yer like at least three hundred fifty pounds or so, with all that fish flab around your waist (Not that I got any place to talk about excess fat or nothin', but…)

"And 'den like that tiny red soipent's gotta be, like, nothin' more 'den sixty, maybe seventy pounds in comparisin'?

"So how the hell is it that that little snake supports all your weight, 'den?"

Rufus's gilled enemy didn't even bother to answer, but just set his frilled head down and waited for his opponent to deliver the final blow—specifically to deliver him from his foe's unbearable spate—the most feculent of logorrhea.

Twenty minutes earlier, the massive man made up in maize wasn't much more mum, as he marveled at the sandfall that served as a backdrop to the round for which he and the other warriors were designated. Adon simply stretched himself out and fixed at the bands around his biceps, while T. Hawk looked for the closest thing to a hawk or eagle that could comfort his arm and his mind while his rotund teammate prattled on and on about the arena.

"So lookee _heah!_ Check _this_ whole setup out! The way dat san' runs all down the back wall and all…it's like cascadin' like its Nyagrah Faws! And da dimenshins of this place! If all dis sand weren't heah, you could have like a regallar drive-thru movie theatah!"

"Oh, Rufiss! Ya so brilliant with yer ideas! Ya shoulda studied ta be a lokamotive when ya were in skewal!"

"Whaddaya mean, baby?"

"Like, one of those people who dizzigns things, like, machines and teknologee and stuff…"

"Oh, Cann-dee, you mean like an engineeah!"

"Yeah, yeah! Like an engineeah! I knew it was one of dose train woyds…"

(Thunder thought to himself, after a fashion, that he might need a different kind of desert eagle, either for Rufus or for himself, if he had to listen to much more of this).

Adon had a similarly pernicious look on his face (well, as he always did)—this expression much more vicious and unforgiving than his usually mean mien. "I want nothing more than to just get on with this…so I can show Cameroon and these alien freaks just how _strong I ammmmm!"_

There he went again, always so arrogantly. If pompousness could be cashed in for looks, Adon would be an Adonis.

The Mexican-plus-Native American nearby looked to the space above the far cliff bordering the sandfall behind him and thought for a second. There were supposed to be four warriors here total. Where was the last one, the Tekkenite, to complete the quartet?

"GET READYYYYY FOR THE NEXT BATTLE (ATTLE...ATTLE...ATTLE...ATTLE)..."

None of the combatants were Judeo-Christian, so they didn't know who the heck it was who just announced.

In any case, the response to the inquiry regarding the whereabouts of the Tekkenite came almost telepathically as the designated Target came whooshing through the air at the three Fighters on the sands.

Shrieking towards them, on what was apparently the Sixth "Scarpent" before the Seventh that would be Crimson Viper's dearly departed pompadour, was a bizarre anthropomorphic fish, somewhat like a Creature of the Barren Cameroon, rather than the Black Lagoon. At first it rode the serpent proudly, as if the thing had nothing to fear.

Then, without any preface, a flashily-dressed Far East detective ran up off the far cliffside and daringly leaped off, landing expertly right behind the fishman on the hovering snake.

Rolling to absorb the impact, then extending into an abrupt attack stance, the Hong Kong hero—known to the Namcoverse as Lei Wulong—immediately set into a flying elbow drop that struck the Target in his gilled face before he could even begin to launch an assault of his own. As the enemy indeed let fly with a reddish bullet that came, from all places, his stomach, Lei instinctively dropped down onto his back, giving a small kick on the way down that took the creature in his fish shin. Before the Target could reload, Lei found his feet again, and gripped the enemy quickly, taking it down—and all of this while the opponent was still on his snake, not even getting down to the sand yet—and putting the monster into a figure four chokehold, cracking something in the thing's neck and then undoing the move to stand above his foe while addressing the Street Fighters.

"I should be just about done with him, [huhh, huhh]," said Lei, somewhat out of breath from all this maneuvering. "Don't worry, I'm used to such high-up antics from my work in downtown HK. All that needs be done now is…"

[KLUNNNGGG]

And then—just as had happened in his high-up antics from the end of the Fifth and Darkly Resurrected Tournaments for him—the red snake atop which he stood had impossibly and unfairly slithered through the desert wall on the left side of the arena, neatly dropping off the prepared Target that controlled the Scarpent, along the way, but taking Lei by surprise and bashing his Tekkeny face against the much rougher rock face of the cliffside. Unfortunately for Lei as well, this time the detective was utterly knocked cold by the impact by the time he hit the sands.

[KRENNNGGG]

This second sound effect marked not another traumatic injury upon Lei Wulong, but rather the sound effect that finally followed God's round announcing.

The Fighters looked from one to the other, and for a millisecond, Rufus had nothing to say.

Then, of course: "Looks like we Caypcommahs gotta clean up aftah da Tekkin messes dose idiots can't contaynnn!"

Thunderhawk said nothing, but just hurtled after the Scarpent in the air so that the warriors would hopefully only have to deal with one more enemy before hopeful victory. The native neared himself to the shifting ground a second, then sprang himself into the air with a stereotypical "Tomahawk!" cry, his chest-thrust crushing against the red snake's eyeless skull and making for another moment wherein a towering tough from Capcomland (other than Vega) bore a serpent on his breast—if only for an instant. This brought the slithery opponent low to the surface, so T dropped on down, held the alien animal high in the air with his feet planted somewhat securely on the shifting sands, then threw the red reptile down once more. Thirsty for one more impact, the burly brave hoisted the snake up one more time, and made to pull off his windmilling throw, he sparking off cyboplasm in all directions, which he was into executing ever since his original, Super Second Tournament days…

…When all of a sudden a whirlwind of a creature (literally) took him off his feet and threw him against the far, craggy wall. The compromised Capcommer could not get to his feet quickly enough to avoid the incoming beryl bullet that followed up the main, green-gilled Target's attack, so he took his lumps—and the ensuing defeat—with some level of dignified acceptance.

Adon and Rufus (yes, even the grossly garrulous Rufus) could say nothing as this all was happening, because of the one-on-one rule of the Tournament. Now that T. Hawk was out of the way, though, Adon was more than ready to show off his murderific muay thai skills to whatever this thing was that he faced.

So as the greenish fish thing alighted onto the sand, Adon one-sided himself roughly past Rufus and took a testy stance toward the Target. "Meet the God of Muay Thai!" he almost screamed, ever so megalomaniacally as he showed off with some huffy uppercuts.

"I am not at all impressed," said the creature. "The first being here which I thought was God turned out to be only a freaking ring announcer. Now I find that he is the spawn of a rooster and a numbskull?! Come, now…face the fright that is…Frillgills."

And with that, the frilly-maned foe furled into his usual whirlwind and charged fully at the self-styled kickboxing deity. The modus operandi of this Frillgills was for him to rush toward an opponent in an invincible whirlwind, then let off an attack, then whirl again before the enemy could begin to formulate a response. Usually it was all an opponent could do to catch up with the Target before he could terrorize the one he wanted to put down.

As it turned out, though, Frillgills would find an interesting challenge in Adon, as the Fighter could close the gap mighty quickly between himself and his enemy, despite the cascading sand upon which any other contestant might normally have to sink through—as Adon could easily cut through it with a downward diagonal dive. And so it was that just as Frillgills spun out of his whirl to face his enemy, the latter had already executed his slanted shunt down, directly into the face of his fishy foe.

And yet, even though Adon had aced the enemy with a direct hit, Frillgills did not go down. The two continued their dance, wherein the Target would whirl around menacingly, then take damage from the Muay master by way of another shunting attack, this happening about another couple of times.

Then, of course, Adon committed his usual fatal error of hubris mixed with a hint of impatience. Unable to wait any longer before hopefully knocking out his enemy, the Thai terror, upon landing near Frillgills next, followed up his dive with a double strike involving one rising knee, then the other; then Adon pulled off yet another double strike with a kick that hit the enemy knee-first, then foot-second, and cyboplasm shimmering all around his limbs as he went, but to little avail. "Ahh, ahh, ah, ah, aren't you…aren't you tired yet, even?!" the pompous pugilist asked incredulously, as he took a second to adjust his stance while remaining right next to his opponent.

The second Adon took his wild eyes off of Frillgills was the end for him. At that exact moment, the monster's gullet opened through an unheralded slit, and out came a sizeable red bullet which struck Adon directly in the throat. This took the self-styled champion off his feet, introducing his shoulder blades to the sharpness of the shifting sands underfoot.

"Prepare yourself," said the Target, "for the Frillgills Thrillkill."

And with that, the thing let loose with another whirlwind which ran right over the shocked body of Adon, followed up by another red bullet to the back of his head. For good measure, the enemy whirlwinded right over the poor guy again, then bulleted him in the hollow of Adon's rear when the latter had turned over onto his stomach.

At the other end of the arena, Rufus paled a bit. But then Candy: "Aww, honey, you better wauwtch out, that fishy thing'll put one of his rubies up y'ass!"

Upon hearing this, certain hidden ninjas had their memories jarred, thinking of a similar-sounding lowbrow woman and her warning regarding something being stuck in a nether crevice. At this one particular shinobi inched closer to Rufus's better half, to divine further concerning her identity.

Simultaneously, the yellow yahoo himself was bounding towards the fishy foe he now had to face, Rufus all too eager to get in at his opponent.

Really, what the more-than-a-man (at least in terms of weight) was interested in wasn't so much tussling as teasing seemingly impossible answers from the alien.

"Haiee!" the Fighter frothed as he executed one of his abruptly-downward shunt kicks just as he was just in front and a few feet above his enemy. Only by chance (and not by skill, as was the case with Adon) did Rufus pull this off just as Frillgills came out of his pain-wracking whirl move. One of the bloated brawler's shoes came into contact with the Target's head just as the man began to babble.

"So what's the deal with ya? You're like a fish outta wattah, liberally? Candy tells me she swims like a fish outta wattah, and I'm meanin' that as a figgera speech, it's not like she's all fishy like you, you know, so don' get any ideehs…"

Frillgills was already kind of exhausted from all of the scrap with the Hawk and Adon and Fei, so facing an enemy who could tire him out verbally, as well as all the more physically, was not something he needed right now.

And now, Rufus with a messiah kick or two, to effortlessly jump over the red ruby bullets his enemy spat from his stomach. Because the Fighter was so huge and weighty, he scrambled down the falling sands to get to the ground in no time. "Yeah, so like, howdoya survive outta da wattah, anyway? Are you like one of those amphytheatah animals that can go and breat' in the ocean and then out in de aiah? And bein' out heah in the desert…ohh, mannn, even if yer one o those ambideckstruss animals, you must want somethin' a drink at some point!"

"Yeah, Rufiss, you said we would stop fa' cream soda when we was in the markets in Cameroon's cities so what happened?!"

"Sorry, Candy, I'm gonna make it up to ya when I'm all done eah!" Rufus was just about done his piece—for the term of this minute, anyway.

"Oh, and by da way Frill…GALACTIC TORNADO!"

With this the Target was completely bowled over by the ballerina-like blitz of Rufus as the latter gave the alien a taste of his own whirly medicine. "You know, ya can dish it all out but ya can't take all da spinning and what's it I'm doin'! REAL fightas know how to get it as good as give it! Butchoo ET people don' know anythin' about dat, now do ya?

"So ya seem like yer in less of a mood to fight now, so let me make it easy for ya! Ya just hang loose and I'll bring it on home! SNAKE STRIKE!"

Indeed, by this juncture Frillgills had about enough for one lifetime. The other fighters were formidable, but this one was like nothing he'd ever seen—or at least heard—before.

The Target didn't even fight back as the cyboplasmically-enhanced super-fast strikes went all over his midsection, the cyboplasmic aftershocks especially giving his belly-bulleting capabilities serious indigestion.

"Okay, so, ya wanna know what me and Candy were thinkin' of doin'? When we was done with the North Pole afta I finished up at the Fourth Fighting Tournament, she says to me, 'Oh Rufiss, you tell me time and 'gain dat I'm'a space cadet, so why don' we go and see if I really got what it takes ta be one?!' So I says, 'So ya wanna go up into SPACE?!' and she says, 'Yeah, Rufiss, let's go see what we hafta do to get up 'dere!' So I'm 'tinkin, when weah aw done heah, I figger I can buy ya a drink or t'ree, Frills, and then we can aw go and the t'ree of us go on ya ship and go up and…"

Desperately, Frillgills tried to open his abdominal maw once more, to emit one more bullet. Because of his fatigue, though, the lower mouth lapsed in opening, and Rufus saw the attack a desert mile away. Accordingly, the large loudmouth dropped to his redoubtable rear and executed a forceful double-open-handed push attack that resembled something along the lines of an adult playing pattycake on the sand. This was one powerful pattycake, though, as Rufus's palms pushed deep into the Gills' gullet and took all the remaining wind out of him.

"Ya know, Candy, what is it with Capcom and all 'dese guys with faces, or mouths, in theay stomachs? Like, the Lucid guy, or some games call him Ass Trough or somethin', from _Ghosts n' Gobblins_…or the last guy from _Forgotten Worrolds_…like, what the hell is it?"

"I dunno Rufiss, I'm not really inta all 'dose Capcom games and aw! I'm inta moah girly stuff, ya know?"

And finally, Frillgills was at the point where we first encountered him, at the start of this chapter, all ready to receive that final blow which Rufus was more than okay with to deliver.

The mountain of a man still wasn't through with the alien conversationally, though, even after he defeated the thing.

"So like, do we hafta get ya to wattah now, is that ya better element? You want we should carry ya to an oaysis or somethin'? We'd have ta be cayful, that it wouldn't be a montage…"

"No, Rufiss, you talkin' 'bout 'dose things ya think ya see in da desert, but they not really theah? You mean a massage…!"

"Okay, okay, Rufus…Candy…hold those thoughts now, alright?"

The overtly obese one turned his head quizzically as he watched the silver-armored buzzcut and his two Chinese companions come strolling into the arena.

"Maaaaan!" the sizeable space buffet bawled, "I dunno how you manage to stay cool in dat armah, Ken, but…"

"Please, Rufus."

"Sorry. People always tole me I was too quiyit when I was a kid…"

The crewcut Ken just ignored this last and looked expectantly to the sandfall that served as the back wall for this arena. Some source known only to him informed that the next message from the mysterious russet/chestnut/umber lady would appear through the sand, as if, as Rufus suggested, the place really could, and did, double as a large theater of sorts.

But before the image could appear, Ken found himself beset with some sort of strange pangs. "What…" he started, clutching at his insides through the armor, "Why is it that every time I need to cyboevacuate, it feels as if something is…crawling around inside of me?"

The seeming hero would have to divine the cause of this later, though, as the Russet-and-Such lady appeared indeed through the sands a second later.

"Your team is progressing well, Ken," said the woman, with three-fourths of her face covered accordingly, "and as you know, the next leg of the tourney will occur in the North, on the island of Christianso, off the coast of Denmark."

"Aww, baby! And we was jus' at da North Pole! If only we put in for da' fourth partta da tourney…"

"Candy, Candy…relax, awright? Da brown-clothe' lady's gotta speak up 'dere."

The mystery lady shook her head behind her hands at this banter. "It was not as if you had the freedom to choose your role in this contest in any case, so the section of the tournament that you were in, was already predestined in any case."

Chun Li perked up a bit as she punched some figures into her handheld computer. "Guys! I managed to find more on the mysterious organization or presence otherwise behind all of this! My intelligence operatives have informed me that the next letter of the culprit is "Eye," so so far it's "Ess Aitch Eye…"

Ling Xiaoyu just looked at Chun Li and threw up her hands. "I'm not even going to say anything."

"Well, we still can't be sure, Ling. You know, the mysterious presence could be Shingen, the main enemy of The Whoreverine, whose exploits the entire multiverse is necessarily going to watch and automatically adore this summer."

Behind the sandfalls, the Lady in Russet continued her address to the warriors. "I look forward to witnessing the efforts of your people in the North, Ken. To help you out once more, I have an Ass Option capsule waiting for you when you reach your next destination."

The ladies accompanying Ken looked one to the other at this.

"Ass Option capsule?" said Chun Li. "It wasn't as if the Flip Shield thing was really all that much of a help, and now this…"

Ling just chuffed cynically.

"I hear Cammy White looks for 'ass options' sometimes when she goes to L.A. in the offseason."

At this Candy perked up yet again, thinking that Ling said her name. "Whajja say about my ass? Ya know, I heah that yaw Gin-guy, he's changed the way that he…"

"All right, all right!" Xiaoyu said preemptively. She started to jog off the scene, to engage in her trihourly checkup on Jin. "I was already on my way out; Christ."

Chun Li shook her head as the other comely Chinese lady left, but then her eyes widened as she noted something new on her computer. "Interesting here," she remarked, "it says here that there was a…Stockardde Strakerstriker…who worked as a Receptionist for the company at which Ken and his associate Troy had once worked…says here her hair is chestnut, eyes umber…

"Ahh, it's just a coincidence." Satisfied at a full, fulfilling day's work, Chun Li snapped her PDA shut and set off for her next, frigid destination.

At an actual oasis in the midst of the Cameroonian desert (and thus not at a montage or a massage), DR Announcer Clint Eastwood sipped back a lemonade and waited for the warriors to scoop him up in the Cybosphere.

But the frighteningly fast vehicle would never get to him in time…even at sixty thousand miles an hour.

"CLINTON," the voice boomed from above. "I HAVE HEARD THAT YOU WISHED TO HAVE AN AUDIENCE WITH THE ONE WHOSE NAME YOU SHALL NOT SAY."

"Yeah…" replied the hoary hardass, as he hauled off his Hollywood chair. He looked crustily out into the distance before he began his address.

"Look, Almighty…Steve and I were talking…we just don't know if it's working out."

Just silence from on high.

"It's just…we need someone with a bit more…naturalness for the part."

At this, suddenly, thunder crashing down in a place where such phenomena never occurred in eons past.

"We're just gonna have ta let you go."

"I SURMISED AS MUCH, CLINTON."

Eastwood looked up to the sky, where he could see no figure—though he knew God was everywhere. "So then…you're not angry?"

A pause for a second. Then: "I'M NOT ANGRY.

"THAT'S MORE THAN I CAN SAY FOR THE COMPANY I'VE BROUGHT ALONG, THOUGH."

And then Clint ducked in vain as the Hand of God suddenly materialized, carrying in it a half-dozen Laotian actors—not the characters they played in Gran Torino, mind you, but the actual, somewhat-neglected actors themselves—as they bounded towards the senior star with very automatic weapons at the ready.

"VENGEANCE ISN'T MINE TODAY, CLINTON. I JUST HIRED IT OUT THIS TIME."

END PART THREE

(Hope you're enjoying the fights so far, SFBBOYZT201XWIAYF2010AP2020M SFATFF fans! There's more to come within the next several days…stay tuned).


	4. Chapter 4: Europe (Seacrest)

PART FOUR: EUROPE (OR "SEACREST")

CHAPTER TEN: TARGET VERSUS M. BISON, CAMMY, JURI, DRAGUNOV (AND OTHER AFFAIRS)

All his life, Lars Alexandersson had wanted to live out a great fantasy adventure.

What he did in his…special campaign against Jin Kazama's reign of terror was honestly child's play as far as he was concerned. What the Swedish soldier really wanted was something so much more enterprising.

He recalled when he was on a date with this one girl Larissa in his teens (he loved the sound of his name so much, and hers was sort of that)…all that making out and languishing just wasn't enough for the intrepid hero-to-be.

"So you wanna, like, go and…fight some enemies somewhere?" he asked his gal, just off the cuff. "We could, like, get a sword and, like, kill some toads or something."

"Eww…what the heck are you going on about? You Psycho Flowbee freak...!"

The suggestion from young Lars didn't break himself up with his girl, although it didn't help him then, either. But basically the young man was ahead of his time; what he was really seeking to do, in all actuality, was what is now called Live Action Role Playing, better known by its acronym.

And it was something that the resistance leader had always wanted to pursue—although, of course, all these years he was too busy…"resisting," in his job and such, to really push this dream forward. But now, in this tourney, he was going to take advantage of the fact that a) he wasn't really assigned to any major event, as he wasn't in the round forthcoming with Dragunov, Bison and company, and b) he was set down (albeit a bit abruptly, with the sixty-thousand MPH Cybosphere and everything, as usual—though this time it only leveled a freaking glacier) in this really bizarrely exotic locale, even though the setting was as Scandi as the man himself.

Yes, now the man would be able to pursue the activity…he would be able to commence to LARSP as much as he wanted. (Of course, he inserted his own name into the abovementioned acronym out of vanity, similar to the brazen conceit behind the crack-induced cowlick that adorned his scalp…maybe, not unlike Crimson Viper, he had some kind of funky life going on above his noggin as well, about which he was unaware).

Lars told his current significant other Alisa all about his teenage dream of LARSPing all the way over during their three-second trip on the Cybosphere. Even as the pink-purple-pated princess extricated the young man from the cybowreck to alight onto the Danish island of Christianso, he was going on and on about the prospect of "fighting enemies" in the wild.

And by the way, to Lars, all the scenarios and campaigns on which he had embarked as of recently did not count as LARSPing. It was all too regimented, all too, again, "resistance" based and nothing along the lines of free wandering.

Because Alisa was really only built for such regimentation, she had trouble grasping and accepting that which her flesh-and-blood beau had been pushing on her.

"Ah, it'll be wondrous, Alisa! Just you and me…out in the wilderness on the island here…I have heard that the area which we're occupying will have some menacing, leaping frog-people whom we can battle…just like the things I've dreamed of fighting since adolescence! Maybe I can even score a sword, or something that looks along the lines of it…like, a real Vikinglike weapon, and wield it like a real fantasy hero!"

Whether the man's synthetic conversant was artificial, as she was, or whether she were actually as human as he, she would have met Lars's raving with the same amount of disdain. Only because she was manmade was she cloaked enough in a veil of ignorance so as not to be as snarky as a fighter who might be really alive.

At any rate, despite the motivations of each to be here, Lars and Alisa alike looked forward to what would basically serve to be their de facto honeymoon here. …They didn't really marry, of course, but through all the adventures on which they set out over the past several months, and all the time they spent together, they basically accumulated enough experiences to constitute a seven-year common-law status of wedlock. Beyond the whole LARSPing obsession, the Swedish soldier thought as well that he would make the backdrop here as romantic for his faux woman as possible.

And for that, he decided he would establish his own honeymoon suite, right here out in the thick of the wilderness.

What he must do first, Lars decided, was that he was going to have to make the Odyssean bed that he always desired for himself and whatever lucky woman he would end up with. Not unlike one of the last books of that great Greek Homeric epic, in which it was recounted as to the way in which Odysseus constructed and Penelope cherished the bed in which the two lay, so too would Lars need to make his legend in erecting a similarly legendary locus of slumber, right here on the tourney's island.

He looked out, across and through the trees, to try and determine what would serve as the most suitable items for bedposts, as well as the boxspring.

And then, in his mounting madness, Lars espied four individuals in the distance, from his own universe, at least three of whom could help him greatly with his task. The bed he coveted all his heroic existence would be his.

Oh, how those animate tree folk would serve as fodder for his bed's uprights! Oh, how that primitive Russian Cyborg's body would be put to so much better use as the undergirding for his soon-to-be-very-storied mattress!

But Lars was savvy, he was sharp, and he was fully cognizant that none of these people—of course, not that fawning blonde who was always with the Cyborg, either—would even begin to cooperate with the Swedish stalwart's scheme. They would most likely resist…but that was okay.

After all, resistance was Lars's middle name, so he would be ready.

"Jack…oh, Jack!" cried Jane as she hugged the arm of the oversized personling that trudged heavily through the greenish platforms of the wilderness. "This seems less like some in-between round of a tournament, and more like a retreat for us!

"Oh, and look at the Mokus!" she continued, warmly indicating the guy and girl Mokujin, the latter similarly hugging the arm of the former in their perpetual exercise of imitation. "I'd say they've got the right idea, don't they? Yeah! It's a double date for us, Jack!"

The Cyborg simply trained his red eye on his girl and grinned goofily back. He was an awkwardly-animated hunk of metal, so obsolete compared to a bionic being such as Bryan Fury...and yet this sixth Jack bastard, like the couple of Js before him, was lucky enough to have a woman who was beautiful, as well as childishly naive just like himself. Jack and Jane comprised a more wooden couple than the Mokujins in terms of personality, but it worked, so what the hey.

Then his neck arched of a sudden, as if he knew the wind was going to change drastically. It was all that the burly 'borg could do to dodge the incoming jumping axe kick that the scandalous Scandi was attempting to deliver personally to his impassive synthetic face. But dodge he did, and instinctively the automatonic Tekkener responded with a fist that fired about a foot from his wrist, with the small blue rods tightly connecting the ersatz hand visible in the marshy daylight. Once said hand tightly connected with Lars's right cheek, Jack brought that palm back.

"The heck do you think you're doing?!" cried Jane as she threw herself in front of Jack, wishing no harm to come to the Soviet synth, as well as her soulmate. "Both you guys, stop it! We're here really to take down some red frog people, or something, as an in-between match…we shouldn't be going at each other!"

Not unlike the Devil himself, when you speak of the red frog people…they will duly appear. Bounding in from below came the terrible toads, they appearing on either side of the Tekkenites to hop around irritatingly and get their literal licks in when they could with their lethal tongues. Jack scooped his love up into his arms and propelled away with his boot thrusters; Male Mokujin tried to do the same with the Female one, but he only ended up awkwardly skipping over to the next mossy platform and tripping to the ground with his girl. When they reached their wooden feet, the Female knocked her beau in the head with a silvery ball which substituted for her fist.

The assiduous Swede had his hands more than full with the enemies all around him. He went to spin-punch one at chest level, and by the time he turned to spin punch what he thought was the same froggy at shin level, it was actually another in the first's place, the original one having dropped back into the murky depths below. As Lars threw one of the anthropomorphic amphibians to the ground through an over-the-shoulder judo throw, then pinned him from a standing position, he looked around crazily, wondering where anyone had gotten to.

Then his own lady love finally flew in, by way of her retractable wings, to help out with the minor threats of targets (with a purposeful lowercase "T" here, as these toads were not major bosses). A frogman attempted to sneak behind Lars and choke the Swede out with its long tongue, but the Namco rebel's lady love had already swooped in, bopped the beast on the head to buffet him into a comatose state, then swooped away.

"Alisa," Lars said, as he went to embrace his simulacrum of a squeeze, "I can breathe once more, as you have now alighted. I want to make this tournament round into the best honeymoon you could possibly imagine with your Bosconovitch-baked brain."

_Meanwhile,_ he asided to himself, _I will make the most of this opportunity to LARSP most lustily, by hunting down and murdering that J and J cyborg/c-word couple._

"We have found the components for our Homeric Great-Rooted Bed," he continued, running his hand idly through his impossible cowlick. "I will go fetch my boxspring; you go after the bedposts."

Alisa readily and subserviently nodded at this, her aquamarine eyes flashing love back at Lars.

"Watch out for more toady mini-targets as you go, my little Rainbow Sherbet Roustabout."

"Yes, my love," was all the awesome automatoness said in response as she took to wing and swooped away again.

Male Mokujin looked around with his seemingly sightless eyes, searching in vain for a safe place from all the toads that kept springing up all around them. The Female kicked with her oaken legs at some near to her, sending them back into the waters from which they came.

"Nok nok nok nok nok nok (Translation: This isn't exactly an ideal place for us to renew our marital vows)," she told her spouse as she slammed an iron ball fist into the face of another frog.

"Nok nok nok nok nok nok _(_Translation:What do you want from me? They sent us to this place for the tourney, and I thought it would be exotic enough for us to multitask, considering our anniversary was coming up.)"

"Nok nok nok nok nok nok (Translation: You'd better have a nice, expensive bottle of water, and an effing bouquet of the choicest acorns waiting for me, when we get home)," retorted the Female.

"Nok nok nok nok nok nok_ (_Translation: Yesss, my love)," said the Male, defeated, as he headbutted a frog making his way to him.

"You two have a lot more to worry about than leaping lizards and your mahogany marriage!"

The Male threw himself at the Female, tackling her to the ground just as Alisa's lethal armsaws sailed above their heads. The artificial upstart looked at her Nature-based nemeses with unbridled fury, fuming at the fact that Lars had never before perpetrated such an act of self-sacrifice. "Nok nok nok nok nok nok (Translation: Prepare to go the way of all trees in a synthetic world)," Alisa hissed in Mokujinese as she brandished her saws once again before the couple.

She lashed forward with a clockwise spin kick that caught the Female full in the face; Alisa then turned counterclockwise to spin kick on the other side, but the Male caught this and with all his arboreal energy threw the girl backward. As the Male approached the android's prone form, in an attempt to throw her over the side of their platform into the waters below, Alisa rushed to her feet, jumping atop the Mokujin's shoulders and rolling off of them to flip him end over head into the air. She then reached with one saw to chop at his midsection, intending with the other saw to cleave him in pieces to the ground…

…When Alisa felt a chain come over her head and wrap tightly around her fake neck. The Female Mokujin had wrapped her arm chainlinks into one long cord, making for a makeshift garotte of sorts. The force of the Female's sudden subsequent pull shunted the android's armsaws back into their housings and made her fall back, choking, against her assailant.

"Nok nok nok nok nok nok (Translation: Let my husband…the fuck…go)," prompted the Female Mokujin. Alisa, in reply, put her hands out innocently, as if to signal that she was going to attack no longer.

Moments later, Alisa found herself chained up around the waist, courtesy of the Female's still hugging her from behind. The Male was reaching with his ball fists for the top of Miss Bosconovitch's head, ready to perform a bit of neurosurgery on the girl (somehow, even though the tree didn't exactly have fingers to work with).

The Rainbow Sherbet Roustabout would finally come to learn about the prominence of Nature now; that much was for certain.

Jack pushed his propulsion systems to the limit in order to get away from the lunatic that was now Lars Alexandersson. The cyborg was sure that he could trust and respect the man, for all that he did in the name of his resistance against the power-crazed Kazama youth, but now it seemed that corruption had crawled into the rebel himself as well.

"You're going to make a miiiiighty fine bed for me and my bride!" screamed the cruel cowlick behind them, as he careened from one platform to another after his own personal targets. Finally Jack reached the edge of the arena, and he had to put his girl down gently and face his pursuer.

"Jack…please…don't get yourself disassembled again," said Jane, her innocent eyes shining in the weary Danish daylight. Do this…for us…but be careful."

The freakish, overpowering paramour of the young woman nodded, then shunted his head to the right to watch the LARSPing monster appear from across the platform. "Out of places to hide, Jack," the crazed cretin cried as he ran towards his enemy. Before Lars could even begin to execute any move on Jane's basement-born betrothed, however, Jack reached in, slung the man on his back, and spun around, faster and faster and faster, into an airplane throw that flung the Scandi scum back onto another, lower platform several yards away.

"You're…going down…you…plastic Pavlovian putz."

Just as Lars climbed up to the platform again, Jack scooped him up into his synthetic arms, not unlike the way he did with Jane at the close of the Fifth/Darkly Resurrected tournament…but unlike with Jane, here Jack turned abruptly, and he set Lars into a near-fatal back breaker.

"Ooh, Jack, don't kill him…" pleaded Jane as Lars, looking out leerily from his supine place on the ground, could see the beauteous blonde approaching from upside-down in his field of vision.

"Bay…baby…" the Swede barely managed to get out, "why did I…settle for synthetic…when I could have a luscious…lady…like you. Ah well…your skin will make a fine comforter for my…bed…"

Jane looked over the semblance of a man that was Lars, her arms crossed angrily over her chest.

"Actually, kill him," she said of a sudden.

Jack raised a steely Soviet fist over the head of Lars.

"No…wait!"

Lars looked tiredly across his peripherals to see Alisa swooping in with the Mokujins…he was glad for this, although the tree folks looked a bit more intact than he would have preferred…

At any rate, the cavalry was here.

Then, Alisa, with the most evil inflection punctuating: "We have a better idea."

Minutes later, a great bed of sorts was indeed set up. Jack did serve as the boxspring, and the Mokujins served as the supports.

However, all of these individuals were still very much alive, much to the shocked and scared chagrin of Lars Alexandersson. The Swedish sort-of-a-man was strung up and out over the frame of Jack, who lay out on his back on the platform in which he and Lars just tussled. What strung his limbs specifically were the arm chains of the Male Mokujin on one side and the Female on the other. Jane was standing by, indignant and arms still folded.

And Lars's great love Alisa hovered directly over him, her wings and saws at the ready.

"What are you doing, my love?!" yelled the far-fallen rebel as he struggled in vain against his bonds.

Alisa paused in midhover, then smiled ever so blankly. "Why, husband…we're only engaging…in a bit of LARSPing. You know, taking a blade and stabbing into something that oh-so-didn't deserve it…you know all about that, don't you?"

"NOOOOO MY RAINBOW SHERBET ROUSTABOUT!"

The girl, reprogrammed thoroughly by fucking (and) walking trees, started now to hover down, the saws inching ever closer to the chest of her once-beloved.

"RAINBOW SHERB…

"RAINB…

"AAAAARRRGGGHHH!"

"This was such a wonderful idea, Jack!" said Jane, hugging the arm of her beloved once again as they watched the sun set over their small Scandinavian island. Jane then looked all around, to the Mokujins holding each other warmly and giving each other literal woodies, to the heaps of deceased frogpeople piled up on various lower platforms, to Alisa on another bit of high ground, her arm around what appeared to be the figure of Lars Alexandersson.

"It is a nice sunset," the pink-purple-pated girl agreed, her eyelids clicking mechanically as she looked out to the panorama, then over to the now-lifeless-yet-automated face of Lars, his own eyes staring blankly into the distance, his eyelids clicking in time with those of his lady love.

Underneath the feet of the human, synthetic, and floral beings, another group of warriors convocated in preparation for a battle against a more prevalent Target. The encounter was to occur beneath the depths of the Baltic Sea, near to the coast of the island Christianso which everyone currently occupied. Down here, two dictator-looking dudes and a pair of scantily-fabricked females readied themselves, stretching, flexing, and…twisting.

"My Spiral Arrow is so…fluid under the water!" marveled Cammy as she allowed herself to corkscrew along the seafloor, her form propelling feet first and scattering a few elements of seafloor life as she went. "I'd better hone its accuracy, though; otherwise, I won't be striking enemies, so much as anemones!"

The purple-pantsed Korean killer nearby rolled her eyes a bit more wildly than usual at this, wishing more than ever to murder the minx from Manchester at her first opportunity. It wasn't as if Juri weren't looking to kill someone anyway, this whole tourney garbage was so boring to her.

She looked over her shoulder and shuddered, though, for the first time in as long as she could recall. When was the last time, indeed, that anyone, especially a man, could put her on edge?

But so it was the case with that shadowy individual in the military suit, with his intimidating scowl and frame that looked as if it could threaten a pure onslaught of evil.

No, Juri wasn't looking at and fearing Bison here. It was that…lovechild of Michael Jackson and Frankenstein's Monster, the terrifying tovarisch known as Sergei Dragunov. At this very second he looked so scary, he staring at the opening and closing of his own gloved hand, then glancing over at the girl and giving her a look as if to say, "This is a pretty sturdy hand."

But it was, like, the creepiest, scariest, most life-threatening hand-admiring-based proclamatory look that Juri had ever witnessed in all of her young life. The only comfort that the girl could give herself was the idea that given Dragunov probably frightened away almost every woman with whom he came into contact, he most likely ended up squeezing that hand open and closed on a lot of occasions, more than he would have preferred.

In any case, behind this tacitly menacing man hovered down the usual core being of cockiness, the prime minister of presumptuousness himself, the Mighty M. Bison. He lowered himself slowly to the seafloor, and looked with smugness at Miss White as she continued to hone her little Arrows. She would certainly need the practice.

"Where is the foe who is scheduled on the itinerary for this particular event?" Bison asked whimsically, punctuating each sentence with the Dead-Rising-2-Slappiest of smiles. "I do not wish to continue this undersea expedition any longer than is required."

(By the way, the Street Fighters were enhanced through cyboplasm to breathe underwater. As for Dragunov…he was just that cold-blooded and really inhuman, so that he could do just fine beneath the waves himself.)

Before anyone could conceive of an answer, Dragunov came rushing up to both girls, almost scaring the cybo out of both. As he approached, he started slapping both cheeks of his rear, very fervently, with his gloved hands. He could not speak, so the murderous mimelike military man had to resort to such charades.

"Oh my God, get the eff away from me, you frightening fucker!"

"Juri!" chided Cammy, wanting to do one of her step-in backhand punches against the evil imp. Instead, she began to pose, with certain authority, just as she would do at the close of her X matches against Tekkeners in the future. "We have to be courteous with these people," she started, shunting to one side with her left shoulder jutting out, "otherwise we will look more savage than the superaliens." At the end of this sentence, she shunted the other way so that her right shoulder led.

Juri raised a "Really?" kind of eyebrow at the other female Fighter. "Okay, so like, could you say that again, this time without all the shoulder voguing? It's really not that necessary."

"I like to be dramatic in driving home my points," Cammy replied, switching shoulders about five more times in the course of uttering these last few words.

She then stepped forward and addressed the Tekkener before them. "…Look, Gospodin Dragunov, we understand that you are unable to speak to us…please, regardless, try to be a bit clearer about what it is that…"

"He's wondering, dear ladies," Bison interpolated sharply, "about who is the recipient of the aforementioned 'Ass Option'—the energy shield that hovers behind the derriere—which the mysterious Russet/Chestnut/Umber lady had brought up while she was addressing our crewcut Ken."

Dragunov then pointed feverishly to Cammy, making the same assumption that everyone else did regarding the buttocks-based power-up.

"I don't have the Ass…Ass Option, or whatever it is!" she protested archly.

The Soviet Sergei cocked his head at this and looked at the woman incredulously. Much to Cammy's dismay, Juri and Bison somewhat followed suit.

"What?!" continued Cammy, in her ever-so-sexy accent, "Why does everyone think I have this ass…thing?" It was, indeed, a question for the ages as to why everyone pinned this particular case on Cammy.

The warriors could not think on the Shadaloo warlord's earlier query regarding the identity of their scheduled foe, nor on the Soviet's posterior ponderance, for very long, as suddenly a current came which forced them all to the right. It was if this undersea locale were becoming a guided tour of the watery floor on rails.

"I can't…I can't move backward!" Cammy yelled as she tried to chug along in reverse, but found herself unable. Juri and Dragunov similarly scratched at the water behind them in vain, then quickened their steps along their way as fighting it all proved futile. The Korean kickass looked down quizzically at Dragunov after a few paces, as she found the man suddenly crawling on his stomach with the current. He looked kind of insidious and ridiculous at the same time, doing it. Ah well, she thought. Whatever floats…pun intended—really "scuttles along the bottom" is more like it in this case.

Eventually, though, the fighters hit a wall, literally, as there was some kind of large growth in the seafloor that needed to be scaled. What was scary about this was that there was a long kind of underwater jetty of a sort overhead, which came crashing down and then receding back up, making for a real hazard along the top of the floor's growth. In other words, if one were to tarry too long along the top of the growth, when the jetty ceiling came down, he or she would make for a very pulped pugilist.

Bison hovered across first, reaching the top of the growth just as the jetty ceiling overhead reached its highest point—the the Thai terror pulled off one of his double-foot slides, which he ordinarily used to trip and damage other Street Fighters—to take him through and over. Cammy was next, and she dashed across with a minimum of effort; she would have Arrowed it over, but she still didn't entirely trust her abilities with it underwater yet. The ones left, on the other side of the growth, then, were Juri and Dragunov.

"Go ahead!" said the Korean klipspringer as she motioned for the old goat of a dictator to haul himself up. Behind them, the edge of the arena, represented also by a rock jetty, albeit a vertical wall of one, was closing in.

Frightened himself of a sudden, Dragunov hesitated. He then charged at Juri, reached her legs, and shoved her up and onto the top of the growth, just as the wall behind them closed the gap. A second later, Juri found herself on top of the growth with the Soviet, who then shoved her again off the apex and to the other side where Cammy and Bison waited.

"Come on!" cried Cammy as Dragunov then found himself alone—with the jetty ceiling closing in more than comfily. He dropped to his stomach again, and attempted his round victory crawl to close the gap…

…but the ceiling crashed down first, making the man emit some kind of oral response for the first—and apparently the last—time in his miserable life.

No one really knew whether to scream in sympathetic agony over the man's death, since he was frankly the creepiest customer that any of them, even Bison, had ever met. So they all kind of just guiltily looked down a second, then moved on.

Surrounding them now were small sea creatures which emerged from tiny holes in the seafloor. They looked like blowdryers, and they cocked their heads, then fired out what appeared to be minnows from their snouts.

"Let me take care of these little bastards," Juri started, angry at the feeling of remote remorse she had regarding that appalling…military mime who basically saved her life just now.

Before she could reach the heart of the minnowers, though, Bison beat her to it, standing among them and…shifting his ass this way and that.

All around the man, the sentient blowdryers shook their heads let to right in excruciating pain, then they exploded.

"What in the name of our lamest of announcers?" Cammy wondered aloud.

Then Bison turned fully around, for the ladies or anyone else to see him from the rear for the first time. Adorning his ass was a pulsating bluish-white sphere of energy.

"Yes," he said proudly, sweeping his hand through the murky waters, "I was the recipient of the prized, coveted Ass Option. And when our part in this tournament is concluded, I will bring the Option home, to my headquarters in Shadaloo, to subject the power-up item to extensive study. It will be the case, ladies…the asses of Shadaloo will take over this planet in time…quite literally."

Indeed, the burning question for this country's hostile international conflicts would not be so much Who has the Bomb, but rather, Who has the Buttocks Barrier or Bulwark or Bastion…whatever.

"Not to worry," the lurid leader cooed, "Since the both of you are so…dear to my heart…my little orphan Juri…my baby Doll Cammy…I will bring you back into my fold, and in no time you will be of a new mind, and of a new maximus as well.

"For you see, this destiny was predetermined for my ass…the 'M' in my name standing for the surname of Gluteus!"

Cammy stepped forward, meaning to cop a reply, but then suddenly a swirling mass shivered through the waters all around them.

The Fighters thought a second to go back to back, all three of them, but Cammy and Juri only did this with themselves for…obvious reasons, regarding Bison and his current "option"al state. They looked out to the deep, dark blue and caught sight of what appeared to be an orangeish beige humanoid with flippers for hands and feet.

"And what do you do?" asked Juri whimsically, not noticing any apparent ability on the Target's part to fire concussive force bolts, nor any specialized weapons or armor on the creature either.

"All that needs to be done is to skim," said the enemy, strangely, as he continued to skim and swim about the waters, circumnavigating the area, yet also not really appearing all that hazardous.

"Oookay," said Juri as she began to give chase. She was starting to get impatient, and was itching to kill some things above ground, so she dashed across the arena and lashed out with her one leg when the Target stopped to look at his enemies again. Juri managed to get her leg around the thing's neck…but then when she went to double-spin kick with the other, the opponent simply swam away, leaving the girl to cascade down to her optionless bottom.

"Damn him!" she cried, getting up to chase the contender again. When she got into range, she executed a high front kick followed by the spin kick which emitted a purple fireball…but again, the Target skimmed away before he could be struck by the projectile. "UGH! That's it!"

Now on the third go, Juri tensed herself, then flung into the really cheap whirling wheeling kick that crossed the area and emitted all sorts of purple energy as she went. The enemy lingered in place for a second…then charged directly at Juri when she was close enough.

The enemy's body seemed to convert into a sort of bluish-white laser arrow when he was in skim form, and this spearish manifestation punctured straight through Juri's whirling wheel, striking the girl full in the stomach as it went. The wind and the fight effectively knocked out of her, the young woman was left to spin listlessly in the open underwater, she letting out an anguished variation of her already-angsty-and-protracted defeat cry:

"I'LL HAVE MY REVENGE!…UNLESS, OF COURSE, YOU HAPPEN TO MOVE TO ANOTHER COUNTRY OR GALAXY AND I CAN'T FIND YOUR ADDRESS, AND I LOOK ALL OVER THE INTERNET AND I CAN'T FIND YOU, AND THEN LIKE OTHER THINGS COME UP IN MY LIFE THAT I HAVE TO TEND TO AND ALL…BUT MAYBE IF THINGS TURN AROUND FOR ME AT SOME POINT, AND LIKE EVENTUALLY I CAN FIGURE OUT WHERE YOU ARE, AND I CAN INDIEGOGO SOME YOUTUBERS INTO DONATING MONEY TO ME FOR GAS, OR ROCKET FUEL, I'LL EVENTUALLY HOOK UP WITH YOU LATER, AND AT THAT JUNCTURE I WILL _MOST ASSUREDLY HAVE MY REVENGE!_"

Cammy and Bison, now ostensibly the only survivors, or at least the only ones intact for the round, looked from one to the other and marshaled their resolve to take on this gothically-gliding Target threat.

The one next to take a turn against the twisting tsunami underwater was none other than the might bison himself. The man, of course, commenced by attempting to match spins with the thing, as he launched without hesitation into his Psycho Crusher torpedo. It was a view to behold as the Bison and his bounty spun all around the place, he diving after it towards the right of the arena; the enemy dodging, then spin/swimming to the left, then holding his position for just long enough for the bastardly buffalo man to take the bait, and torpedo to the left; this going on and on for several minutes, with even Cammy, for all of her own experiences with the Spiral Arrows she effectuated, she now becoming dizzy from witnessing all of this.

At last Bison seemed to run out of spinning steam, and he ground down to a halt in the center of the arena. "Come on," he said, between heavy, belabored pantings, "stop running…swimming away from me. Take me like a man."

The Target inched ever forward a bit closer…and then Bison catapulted forward with his scissor kick in the hopes of catching his opponent off guard and directly in the face to boot. Should the opponent have shunted away, he figured, he could always turn and expose his Ass Option as a last resort (ass resort?)

Unfortunately for the Shadaleader, the enemy yet again flitted away just as the dictator was about to do him in—and even faster than Bison could turn to show him his bad ass side; an instant later, on top of it, the foe plunged directly into Bison's body, as he did with Juri before. "NYOOO-YO-YO-YO-YO-YO" went Bison's cry, son, as his tragically-curled-up figure floated in slower motion than before and disgracefully to the ground.

Now all that there was left was the Caminator.

"You have been very patient, my lady," said the Target as he slowly neared the woman who remained. "Shall we…complete this whole dance, now?"

The girl spoken to had only nodded. "For the record," she said, looking up with her partially scarred yet paradoxically immaculate face, "I'd like to know the name of the next opponent whom I will trounce totally."

"It is a falsehood that you will trounce me," said the Target, "but for the record, indeed, my name is…Skimmer."

"You're called Skimmer?"

"Yes."

"How incredibly, overwhelmingly…unimaginative."

And with that, Cammy launched into a Cannon Spike, which he foe dodged duly. Skimmer then converted into his swirling spear form early, attempting to curtail the battle most efficiently, but the girl ducked away with her own brand of nimbleness.

"My, you're quite the slippery one, yourseAAAGGH," the Skims started to say, when of a sudden Cammy sprang onto his shoulders, then flipped back so that she threw him over her head.

"Just like my frien-, er, mortal enemy Bison, Skimmer," said Cammy, "I'm a fighter who can get into a bit of a "spinning tizzy of her own!" And with that, Cammy executed the best underwater Spiral Arrow that she had pulled off all day, in terms of its beautiful perpetration. For some reason, though…

…it still wasn't enough. Apart from the one moment just now in which the Englishwoman had managed to get Skimmer with her throw (and this only because of luck and the fact that he stopped to talk for too long), the creature still could not be scored upon as Cammy whiffed past the Skimmy one and into the edge of the arena.

Skimmer, meanwhile, had been floating around a small beige bank in the middle of the arena, looking to shoot his mouth off a bit more. "Sorry, Camera, as you are called, but I've no designs on being caught again, beyond that one stroke of serendipity you had a minute ago."

And then the Target found that he was unable to speak any more as suddenly he found his flippered feet fettered by the pale, cruel hands of a familiar dictator believed dead for the past twenty minutes.

Cammy watched in abject shock as none other than Sergei Dragunov suddenly emerged from behind the small beige seafloor bank, the man as much on his stomach as he was when the Fighters last saw him and believed him to be crushed by the jetty ceiling. Taking the enemy down to his own ground level, Dragunov then hauled himself atop the Target and commenced to punch the Skimmer several times in the face. This was met by a stab in the side from the enemy, courtesy of the creature's sharp, flippered hand. As Dragunov hauled back off involuntarily, Skimmer, a bit wearied from his pugilistic punishment, started to step off into another watery spin…

…when Sergei then reacted with a spin of his own, as he went into a spinning single elbow smash that basically donkey punch-, well, elbowed, of course, the enemy in the back of the head. Skimmer crumpled to the ground, and then when he tried to rise once more, Dragunov completed his assault with an overhead double elbow smash that did the enemy in.

It was the two of them in reality, Cammy and Draggy, who were responsible for the trouncing of the Target.

The beautiful blonde British agent carefully approached the sinister-appearing Tekkener as he gathered himself together from the victory. She ducked her head carefully into his peripheral vision, and managed a grin that set the both of them at ease.

"Grea…great job, Sergei," she offered, receiving a somewhat lukewarm sneer from the Russian rascal in response. She looked out to the bodies of Bison and Juri and thought to rouse them…but she needed to relax a second first.

She looked over again to Dragunov, her curiosity aroused a second. "Hey…" she started, "how did you survive that crushing ceiling, anyway?"

Dragunov said nothing (of course), but merely spread his hands out in front of him and began gesturing the entire explanation. He didn't know ASL or anything like that, so really he was just trying to, like, talk it out without being able to talk at all.

"Nevermind," Cammy said, somewhat warmly yet also absently, "You can just…write it down for me or something later."

CHAPTER ELEVEN: TARGET VERSUS POISON, HUGE ANDORE SENIOR, GUY, ROSE, GANRYU

Near to the skating rink arena where the next set of fighters would converge, a very skinny, scrawny, dorky-looking individual pumped on over to a pickup truck and deposited two metal suitcases.

"That beefy, robust Super Arcade fucker thinks he's all that with his amped-up round-calling. Well, I've got a good…Bonus Stage prepared for him."

He opened one of the cases and caressed the carbine within.

"To paraphrase the Darkstalking Felicia in one of the victory statements in the obscure Capcom Fighting Evolution/Jam, he's gonna have to dance, and move his feet! …In the face of these mean pugilistic foreign objects…that's for damn sure."

Otherwise, on the Scandi island…

(Soft Voiceover from Tekken 5/DR Tournament Prologue Narration, with accompanying theme: _Boop boop, baahhh_…)

(Cut to giant clam floating through an alien air, on a freezing plain on faraway Seacrest):

_ Ever since she could remember, the clamlike, suggestive-organlike entity known as Vulvavalve had felt out of place in her existence. Her childhood was lonely, although she was raised by a tough yet loving aunt; regardless, Vulvavalve had to learn many of life's lessons on her own._

(Depiction of clam being approached by shadowy figures from over a knoll:)

_ (Boop, bop, bahhh…)_

_ Then she was approached by unknown individuals who offered her a chance to avenge her aunt's death at the hands of a particular crewcut fighter some years ago. She was given the opportunity to change her name as well, and so she took on the moniker of Mollustar, given that she was mollusklike in appearance and emitted pink stars from her body._

(Image of Mollustar up close and opened up, with her brain pulsating and her noselike projection puffed up:)

_ (Boop, bop, bahhh…)_

_ (Ssshhh Ssshhh Ssshhh (Goofy Kuma-like Narrator voice again): "I'll show that buzzcut bastard who he's dealing with!" says Mollustar, motivated by the demise of her aunt, as well as the drive to become something more, as she enters what is now known due to partial sponsor buyout as The Prince of Iron Fist, (The) Whoreverine, and (The) Whoreverine Tournament 201X)._

(End Tekken 5/DR Voiceover)

"Aww mayyan, you'd t'ink dat with this playce bein' nawth and aw, they'd take bettah cayah of dere hocky rinks!"

"Shut up, Huygo, and getcha 'self ready and aw…"

Guy looked over to the Mad Gears with whom he was grouped, and he sighed long and low. Why couldn't he have been put in with people of greater stock for the most part, such as the cultured Dudley, or even the somewhat-noble-if-still-sinister Sagat…

Not that he was complaining entirely, as despite the fact that he didn't have an English boxer who loved flowers…he did have the loveliest of Roses with him. This was always enough to sate the grimacing gaijin gainfully.

"This entire contest is somewhat spurious in what it purports to be," said the magnificent Italian fortune teller to the Final Fighter, as she played with the energy balls floating all around her. She marveled at the way in which the cyboplasm made them seem to grow ever more intense than before…but there was a small portion of her that didn't entirely trust it, either. "I predict that we are in for more than just your average altercation here."

The orange shinobi glanced at the woman, then down at the ice on which he walked. Whether it was at a skating rink on an island in Denmark, or in the deepest bowels of Metro City, he would have been more than glad to take the woman right then and there…and there was something more to this place, indeed…something in the air that made him entertain these thoughts of amorousness.

This was not lost on the Gears either, as despite their seeming usual bickering, there was a bit more of a softness to it. Even as Poison chided the enormous violet, violent child who was her partner, her gorgeous face registered a bit of…tenderness as she did it.

In truth, Poison and Hugo Senior had been in love for so long—they would certainly rock the upcoming X tournament between the Fighters and the Tekkeners, the contest to be inspired by this very superalien extravaganza—it was more than just a manager/pugilist relationship.

Really where the tragedy in all of this lay was that despite the fact that each loved the other so dearly, they found themselves thwarted simply by the difference in size between them. Each wanted so fervently to consummate the relationship (not marry yet, mind you, but just…consummate sexually), but the cold fact of the matter was that…well, Senior could not…fit inside his love.

They tried everything, from lubricating measures to muscle relaxants, and nothing worked. Hugo was just too huge, too humongous for his comparatively petite purple pleasure (even though Poison per se had FAR too long of legs to be considered "petite").

The fact of the matter was, too, that passion-related frustration was inherent in the relationship between Guy and his girl as well, only with them it was more of a matter of prudishness than physical impossibility. There were far too many inhibitions between the two…they just had to learn to let themselves go sometimes. But it was just hard, given their standardly stoic dispositions.

Even beyond these two couples, there was another present, whose state of fluster was infinitely greater than the others. The sumo wrestling Tekkenite slapped his face a few times to get the cobwebs out, then slapped himself a few more to beat himself up at not securing the love of the lady whom he had sought all these years. Ganryu wanted Julia Chang, still after all this time, and it was maddening that she never returned his affections.

From the brimstony depths of Hell, a certain announcer's voice sounded, shaking the arena:

"GET READY FOR THE NEXT BAT-TLE…" (DWANN)

Ganryu shook his head leerily at this spontaneous statement. He had really hoped that the American Captain would announce his round, as when that particular inflection sounded, it made the wrestler think of the spreading spotlights of the Fifth Iron Fist, which in turn made him envision a most dynamic image of Julia's unclothed thig…

[SMASSSSSH]

The sumo shunted his attention over to that…Guy person as a very emphatic jump kick smashed through some barrels on the side of the rink. Ganryu didn't know what it was with that fighter and the giant cans…the sumo got to the rink before the others and stared quizzically at this small grouping of orangey barrels on one side of the arena. He then watched as Poison came in, piggybacked on Hugo; Rose just floated on in with those strange glowing spheres all around her; and Guy made this completely unnecessary dramatic entrance smashing through the set-up barrels. Now he was doing it all again; apparently the warrior was obsessive compulsive and couldn't go more than ten minutes without playing Jumpkick The Can.

God, Ganryu thought as he continued to slap himself, he missed his Native American nymph…

Although these ladies here, with their fantastic fuchsia follicles, really provided quite the distraction for him. In fact, within the ensuing minutes, Ganryu found himself going bonkers over both Rose and Poison.

The hell with the violet goliath and the orangina ninja here—sumo would overcome them, and Ganryu would walk, or at least slip and slide, out of this rink with both girls on his arms!

And so it was that, when each of the pairs was situated on either side of the rink, the wrestler of the Far East looked from one to the other, cleared his throat, and took a deep breath.

"Girls," he said, under his breath at this point, "I have…I have something I need to tell you…"

Neither of the women were paying attention to the man, of course, as for one, Ganryu was mumbling almost inaudibly; two, Rose was still occupied pontificating her hypotheses regarding the tournament to Guy; and three, Poison was still busy abusing Hugo Senior in the most loving fashion. Everyone seemed a bit on edge, though, as the announcer's call made it apparent that the Target was going to appear very soon.

Ganryu figured, though, that he still had a moment, so he just went for it.

Dropping fully to his knees, he spread his meaty arms as widely as he could, and belted it out:

"POISON AND/OR ROSE, I LOVE Y…"

[GASHASMASHASHMASH!]

Everyone turned at this, first at the initial shock of hearing this completely creepy confession from some random sumo wrestler…

…then at the sight of the same man being drawn up into the maw of a scarlet snake, one much larger, and more rigid and enraged than any snake in the third leg of the tournament. The beast's mouth was unable to consume the man entirely, but its dental grip was strong enough to grab tightly onto the Tekkener and drag him under into the icy, watery depths below.

Guy looked down at the surface on which he stood, and for the first time he noticed that, not unlike the utterly improbable (and incompetent) climax of the latest Resident Evil feature film, there was life underneath the ice…strange brains with single cyclopean eyes and jellyfish stingers…it was much more bizarre than anything the ninja had ever before encountered.

He knew, in any case, that he had to keep the one he loved safe. Just as he watched Hugo hefting Poison onto his shoulder, he went to reach for Rose…

…But she had already levitated herself into the air, surveying the scene herself as she dodged more serpents. "Watch your own back, Guy," she said admonishingly as she continued to hover. "I'll be alright up here."

It really was a question, though, as to whether anyone would really be "alright" in this arena, given the fact that these red reptiles came on in a most crushingly cruel fashion, with ginormously jagged teeth that made them astronomically more menacing than the cutesy crimson snakes ever so readily charmed by Zafina in Cameroon.

"What should we do, Rose?" Guy asked frantically, looking out for undersea serpents while carefully setting up his pile of barrels once more.

"Let me assess from my vantage the most superior strategy…meanwhile, you just…go on ahead,

with your compulsive habit."

Guy nodded, then, in the midst of all the erupting anacondas, executed another perfect, potent jump kick through his beloved barrels, just to satisfy his quarter-hourly OCD needs.

Then, from above:

WAYWARD-STRUMPET-GENDER-DETERMINATION-MOTIVATED-ABSOLUTIST-TOTALITARIAN-

REGIME-ENSCONCING-ANTHEM (REPRISE) (Same theme as before, again played _forte_ to the tune of the background music, this time in the Floating Clam fight at the end of _Street Fighter 2010_'s Planet Four):

_Rox-y, Poi-son,_

_What's-their-gen-der,_

_I-don't-(expletive)-know,_

_I'm-a-re-tard,_

_Doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo…_

Suddenly Rose noticed some shadowy figures she might have caught sight of at the very beginning of the tournament, back in Metro City…they were all crowding what was basically the superbox of the rink. They had some…technology on them, she could tell, which they were apparently training on Poison for some reason. At the moment, the figures were all standing around, seemingly…singing the theme that was assaulting her ears at present. Rose sensed that the other purple-follicled maiden was not in any danger on part of these interlopers…although their gender-determination motives certainly were questionable.  
The alluring Italian fortune telling temptress was then almost taken to the ground by the entrance of the most appalling and ghastly sight that anyone present had ever seen—much worse than the aggressive red snakes…

It was some sort of strange…hovering clam, at least at first. When it opened up, it yielded some kind of purplish brain, with what appeared to be a nose and pulsating nostrils beneath. Even though what was inside the thing suggested the components of one's head, the exterior of the creature and just its general opening-and-closing dynamic suggested something much more prurient.

"Oh my…my gawddamn," shouted Poison, as she gaped up from atop Hugo Senior's shoulder, "It's lyike a gyint…KILLAH COOCH!"

Guy stared at the thing as it hovered over slowly. With the monster hanging there in midair, and so many long, hard snakes shooting up around it…it was in his poetic mind like a metaphor for the frenzied pursuit of the female mystery by a multitude of sturdy male hormonal…

_Nevermind,_ he thought to himself, reengaging his focus. _Got to get back in the game…_

"We gawn' get kill', and the yooneyverse is gonna get blown up, by a jygantic…woman's privates?!" cried the older Andore as he scampered over to the other side of the arena, actually in abject fear for one of the first times in his life.

"Come awn!" yelled Poison, striking at the mountain of a man with her riding crop as they went, she pointing back to the Target, "don' be what that…THING up theah basically is! Ya gotta fight it, ya big oaf!"

But Guy and Rose were already one step—or kick—ahead of them all. Seconds ago, Guy witnessed the traumatic sight of another snake crashing through the ice, the ice which was situated just beneath his little barrel children, scattering the cans to and fro. The ninja dropped to his knees abjectly.

"NOOOOOOOOOO!"

"GUY!"

Then he turned, the shinobi's eyes streaming with tears, as he caught sight of Rose again. "Those reptiles might have wrecked your barrel babies…but you can wreak REVENGE on them! Come, work with me now!"

And with that, Guy set to wrecking the snakes, while Rose worked on the…Target itself. The former went at it with more heavy-browed grimness than ever before, he pulling off his iconic jumping spin kick to knock out one serpent, then he somersaulting into the air, to dive down with elbow aside to chase after another snake receding into the ice…he even preemptively slide-sweep kicking a third reptile just as it rushed through the rink's surface to topside.

Simultaneously, Rose was working at Mollustar as energetically as she could. Climbing up onto some weird sort of stony, icy platforms in the middle of the rink, she let fly with a purple projectile emanating from her whimsical yellow scarf. When the enemy inched closer, not seeming to register any damage from the teller's assault, she then just let fly with the scarf itself, the charged clothing striking the clam directly in its purple nose. It seemed to register damage…but it was still approaching steadily.

Rose then lunged back, bunched up her scarf, and charged with one last thrust towards the appalling opponent…this too stroked harshly against the thing's schnoz, and it was hurt, but it didn't stop coming, and closed into its clam form.

"ROSE!" cried Guy from below, knowing that his lady love was in imminent danger.

When Mollustar was basically almost on top of the woman, it opened up again, and, a foot from the lady's face, fired off some…pink stars, one of which struck Rose across the cheek. The shock from it all was enough to make her topple from her precarious platform and plummet to the rink's surface below.

"ROOOOOOOOOSE!" Guy screamed as he dashed forward, catching the woman just as she fell.

All the shock from the fighting generally, though—as well as the loss of his dear barrelly spawn—was at last too much for the Gearbusting Guy. "Profound…sadn…" was all he could make out as he passed out, with Rose still in his arms.

This just left the sketchy scumbags that were Senior and Poison, who were still in their papa-and-piggybacker formation.

"Whadda we do, Poysin?!"

"Set me down a second, ya oaf!"

Senior heeded, and gently let the woman down. He stood there before her, his head tottering around like the most confused, confounded circus creature.

Then some more pink stars came raining down from the Target's proboscis. Poison let loose with one of her magnificent long-legged high kicks to knock out a couple of the projectiles, then she destroyed the others with a wave of purple energy from her riding crop, as well as some strikes from the crop itself.

"Awright," she said, finally, returning to her man once the threat passed and the Target floated away momentarily. "So's…we gots ta get ta that…lala up deah, right?"

"Yeahh!"

"And, dere's like these…snake t'ings, that look like big long schl…

"Oh my gawddamn."

She thought on it a second. Could this be the couple's chance?!

"Hyugo!"

"Yeahh?"

"You git to grabbin' one a dose snakey fuckahs! I got an ideeah dat'll kill two boids with one Beljah crawssboah bolt!"

With that, the giant fuchsia freak loped around the rink, looking for the next reptile eruption while Poison launched herself into one of her famed prost sisters forward handsprings.

And she was so seasoned at it that, unlike her sister, she didn't need any cupped-hand alley-oop from an Andore to get the altitude she desired.

An instant later, the hidden shinobi in the superbox were stymied to see the purple prostitute straddled across the top of the Target, her long tanned thighs spread over the edges of Mollustar's clam exterior, the girl almost steering the thing with her riding crop.

Duly one of them checked off: "Hypothesis on Poison: POST-OP."

Down on the ground, Hugo rushed suddenly at one snake, bopping it with a spastic spin punch that made the thing willow to the ground abruptly. Another rose up, and he put it down with a giant-handed slap.

"I says GRAB one of 'em…NOT BEAT 'EM ALL DOWN!"

"AWRIGHT, POYSIN!"

When a third came, Hugo Senior attempted to get his hands around the thing, the way he would when he lifted someone off the ground and choked him in midair. However, the monster was too slippery to hold, and it just slid through his hands.

"HUYGO!"

"DAMNIT, BAYBEE!"

Somewhat fed up with all of this, Andore the First just went ahead, took a deep breath, and jumped into one of the holes left by one of the invading snakes.

Anything to get away from his woman's nagging for a friggin' minute.

Down there, in the murky depths, Ganryu was still alive and sumoing. It was all he could do to fend off these constantly rising brain jellyfish, known to the crewcut Ken and his cybocompany as Death Eyes. He spun and slapped at one, he actually grabbed another and executed a belly-to-brain throw, he hopped on one foot like an inebriated tengu and slap-slap-slapped at several others.

With still others, he tried like an overweight Asian Mario to hop on their backs, in an attempt to ride them to the surface. Unfortunately, as with his ending to the Sixth, Deity-Announced Iron Fist, his overwhelming weight proved to be a problem here.

Then he watched as that purple peninsula of a person plunged into the water nearby. "BRGGGUMUMUM!" he tried to say, in an attempt to get the Andore's attention, but it was to no avail. (Ganryu was not a cyboplasmically-enhanced Street Fighter, but he could breathe underwater for long periods of time thanks to his enormous yokozuna build). The sumo could do nothing, though, but watch helplessly as the godawful giant grabbed at one of the scarlet snakes that was reaching for the surface, and he rode it all the way up.

Shrugging, the sumo forgot about the Death Eye jellyfish, realizing now that there was a better means of transportation available.

Topside, Poison maintained her position atop Mollustar, her fabulous figure keeping up with the thrashing of the Target as it did all it could to get her off its back of sorts. The prost remained steadfast, though, despite the fact that she was looking down desperately at the ice for her associate.

"HYUGOOOOO! WHEAH ARE 'YA?!"

Then, there came the occasioning of the second chronicled miracle on (and really below and above) ice.

"YO, POISON!"

Emerging through the surface came Hugo Andore Senior, he riding one of the most vicious red serpents to issue through the icy grounds of the rink. Furiously he guided the thing directly towards the Target, just as Poison had planned it. In turn, the girl whapped with her riding crop against the side of Mollustar, so that the thing was goaded toward the oncoming reptile.

With a violet vengeance the two engaged, Hugo inserting his enormous snake into Poison's delicate clam. He thrust and thrust, and she received and received ever so readily.

"OHH, HYUGO…"

"YO…POY…SIN…"

The two moved as one with the rhythm of their fightmaking, between them the monsters they mastered cringing and collapsing against the force of the Fighters' passionate pushing.

"HYYYUGOOO!"

"POYYYSSSINNN!"

The main enemy mollusk between the two was now about full to bursting from the pressure of the assault.

"YES! YES! YESSS!"

[BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM]

[GUMMA GUMMA GUMMA GUMMA GUMMA GADGEAGAGDEDADADGE]

Hugo Senior was first to fall to the rink's surface, he carefully catching Poison as she followed. Then the two dropped to the icy surface, both completely spent.

About ten minutes later, while the jaws of the ninjas in the superbox were still dropped after all this time: "Hyu…go…"

"…Yeahh?"

"I need…could you go to the stoah on the eyelin', and get me a cigarette…"

"Shoah, Poysin."

A bit of a pause in the peeling silence.

"Acshly, no, wayt. Make that a couple'a packs."

"Awright."

The mauve monster began to haul up and heave off.

"No, wayt."

"Whahht?!"

Another pause. Then:

"…Make it a few cahhtins."

Hugo Senior looked lovingly to his woman. It had all finally been consummated…their love, that is. (Nothing more serious than that—Senior would thrash this author if anything greater were suggested).

"And those are cartons that are very well-deserved, Poison."

Wearily the wisteria whore looked up to see the silver sentinel of this entire tournament known as the crewcut Ken. He strolled in nearly as regally as ever—although he came off as a bit strange insofar as he was wearing flippers this time around, to completely clash with the rest of his getup.

"Whurr tha flippahs…foah?" Hugo Senior barely managed as Ken barely acknowledged him walking by.

"Well," said the supposed hero, "I heard that the swimming is intense up here, and I was so jealous watching the group down in the water with Skimmer that I decided to jump in after they were done. I figured, also, that if I wasn't really competing, and couldn't get the Flip Tail Shield power-up this time around…I'd settle for the flippers, and submerge myself a spell."

Chun Li and Ling Xiaoyu obligatorily filed in, of course, a few seconds later.

The crewcut team captain cracked the his knuckles, then continued, "I'd have to say that it was a pleasant dip in the waaAAAUGGH!"

Suddenly a flippered foot foundered, then slammed hard against the ice. Ken doubled, basically tripled over in agony as a segment of the very icy floor flashed and yielded, once more, the partially handplanted visage of the Russet/Chestnut/Umber lady.

Impossibly, she had the same goddamn dress on from all the other encounters.

Then again, so did everyone else have the same clothes on the entire tourney.

She allowed herself a bit of a smug hmphing laugh before addressing him. "…Does it hurt yet, Kevin? Do you know what's happening to you?"

"No," the crewcut cried, clutching at his stomach as he went down. "You wanna clue me in a bit?"

"Join me, and I'll make the disease go away. I will make the internal epidemic from which you are struggling completely disappear. I will relieve your pain."

The man spoken to just continued to hug himself as he staggered away from the scene all of a sudden. Chun Li was stunned and didn't know what to say or do.

"Chunner," prompted Ling, not even bothering anymore to pay attention to the menacing presence decked out in variations of brown, "did you get any more intel on our mysterious evil organization and/or person behind it all? I mean, it's not like the woman talking to us through the fucking FLOOR is that 'Stocker' chick or anything…she only has her figure, clothes, and from recordings I've heard before, her voice…she's not even altering her inflection!"

"It's still muffled through the hands," said the Chinese Interpoller.

"[SIGH]." Ling just shook her head, and this time she trundled out of the place without even being Jin-baited into it at all.

"You know," she said, from the edge of the arena, to the Russet woman, "you just said 'Kevin'" just now. Like, as in Kevin Strakerstriker, who was known to terrorize inhabitants of so many other game universes? …Yeah, and the guy in charge of us, with the shades…HE'S really our caveman-coiffed champion. My Mandarin ass."

Chuns just shrugged as the Chestnut one said nothing back, but merely allowed her image to wink out along the ice.

Then Chun came to fully.

"KEVIN STRAKERSTRIKER?!"

Something about that name—the name of a certain intergalactic and interdimensional criminal about whom she had read for some Second-Street-Fighting-Sequel-Spans now…

Chun Li now looked all around her, but the silver stud, whom she thought for sure was coming back, had apparently taken a cybopowder.

Minutes later, just the combatants from the latest round remained, Poison still itching like nuts for her massive nicotine fix.

Over the past several moments, Guy and Rose came to as well, and they crawled to one another and hugged warmly, tenderly. Then they found out from Hugo Senior how Mollustar was defeated, and the pair of more prudent lovers, figuring that the bar was set low for taste here, decided that the time had come now for them to "be with one another" as never before.

(Hours later, in the evening following the skating rink shutout…)

A pulsating purple shellfish-looking entity lay near death, completely spent, while the boots of a gleamingly-armored figure could be seen approaching it.

"Ssshhh Ssshhh Ssshhh [Translation: How could you fail us, Vulvavalve?]"

"Ssshhh Ssshhh Ssshhh [Translation: Don't you DARE call me…by that…ugh…]"

"Ssshhh Ssshhh Ssshhh [Translation: What are you going to do about it? It's not like you're in any position to threaten me, or my associates.]"

"Ssshhh Ssshhh Ssshhh [Translation: Go to hell…Ke…Kev…]"

"Ssshhh Ssshhh Ssshhh [Translation: You had your chance and you failed. It's a one-way cybosphere trip to the the intergalactic buffet for you now.]"

"Ssshhh Ssshhh Ssshhh [Translation: N…no…]"

The figure, coated entirely in silver armor except for the head, just sucked his teeth and left the scene. What a waste of cyboplasm this superalien turned out to be.

It looked like "that old axiom would have to be proven," as the Street Fighter announcers liked to say…this one, though, about doing a job right, and who was trusted in the end to rise to the occasion.

[Poignant piano chord from end of certain Tekken 5/DR midtournament cutscenes]: _Da-doo…_

Then about an hour later, the beleaguered Tekkenite sumo wrestler finally made it to the surface. All the scarlet serpents and other monsters were gone once the clammy Target was destroyed, so Ganryu, unable to swim just forced himself to dog (or bloated hound) paddle himself topside.

He looked about, hoping for either of his lavender loves…but found himself utterly alone, once more. At this the sumo struck a look of shock that made his face after being jilted by Julia at the end of the Fifth/Darkly Resurrected Fist look like a cyboplasm-eating grin in comparison.

END PART FOUR


	5. Chapter 5: Oceania (Steelhull)

PART FIVE: OCEANIA (OR "STEELHULL")

CHAPTER TWELVE: TARGET VERSUS GOOBER RYU, EVIL RYU, AKUMA, ONI, GEN, GOUKEN, HEIHACHI,

JINPACHI, WANG JINREI

It was difficult for any of the old ones around in the area to determine what exactly was going on. This was especially the case since they were all still very much reeling, bones brittle and senses all the more weakened, by the traumatic impact of the Cybosphere into the side of the apparent alien ship that substituted for the fifth and final "planet," the grounds for which were on the island of Chomedokl of Palau. All they knew was that they awoke in some sort of devious assembly hall.

"What is this terrible…chamber into which we've been shunted?" wondered Gen as he peered through the rheumiest of eyes to gander at the soulless silver walls all around them.

Gouken said nothing for about a minute, but simply placed a hand in front of his mouth, and rested that side's elbow on his other's forearm to make himself look as sophisticated as possible. "I am not certain…but I would hazard that this entire area is some sort of…"

He looked down to what appeared be a gate in the floor of the room. "…Dis…posal unit! It's like a place where old, useless refuse is chucked away to its final resting place…"

From a platform above, the overly wrinkly figure of Heihachi Mishima jumped down. He began to approach the two elderly Street Fighters with his perennially gruff yet goofy voice. (For some reason, Heihachi could always pull off sounding cruel yet clueless at the same time.) "What have you Street Fighters gotten us into now?!" he groused like the usual bullying buffoon he was, speaking with pointing fingers as always. "This whole predicament is all your doing…and your fault!"

Before either of the SFers could answer, a voice from above. "Don't put this all on them, Heihachi. You know that the Zaibatsu came here of its own free will."

"Damn it, Wang! Let me make my blustery pitch already!"

The elderly, noble Chinese master trundled painfully on down with Jinpachi Mishima, his childhood friend and friend for so many decades, in tow. The latter made Heihachi look like a pressed suit in terms of the wrinkles on his body.

"It is not for us to discern what is occurring here," continued Wang. "We must just wait to let matters unfold."

"I am with my son, Wang," said Jinpachi, flexing the face in his stomach and allowing those nether teeth to flash their pearly whites. "We must determine what is transpiring, now! My impending conque…er, conciliation with all life on this planet demands and cannot wait for any less."

"IT IS TIME FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PEOPLE OFOUR AGE!"

The Paleolithic pugilists all turned at the sound of this voice. Flying down to them now was a greatly menacing (and highly overused) figure, decked out in his usual violet-black gi with the burning Japanese character on the back. "We have little time," boomed Akuma as he stepped out of the small circle of cracks in the ground he made from his splashdown. "There are figures yet more evil than I who must be stopped…and their plans against us as well."

"For once, Akuma is in the right."

All the farts turned, all but Akuma in abject shock at the incredibly late appearance in this Street Fighter story of none other than the surnameless Ryu. The white-gi-knight walked over to the others and did all he could to explain in time. "Even Oni—Akuma's worse half—is not as bad as my ow…"

"HE'S GOING TO DISPOSE OF ALL OF YOU!"

Again the old farts turned, groaning this time. How many dramatic entrances in one episode were there going to be?

Now a monster of a human pounded down, who resembled Akuma except for the fact that he looked a hell of a lot more roided up, especially with his gi top down, and his hair was completely cyboloogie white.

"Oni," Ryu began, "we must all…"

"IT IS FAR TOO LATE FOR US TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT THIS! THE TIME OF THE ELIMINATION OF THE ELDER RACE HAS BEEN REACHED!"

"HE IS CORRECT."

One more time now. The last one to the party finally arrived, this one a roided-up Ryu with one side of the gi rolled down, making him actually look more like an inbred hillbilly version of the original SF hero than an unholy corrupted one. What was noticeable about him, too, was that his hair was not goober brown, like the Ryu known well to all, but rather it was a fierce red.

Not unlike the first incarnation of Ryu, in the First Fighter Tournament so long ago.

"EVIL KEN…OR 'KEVIN,' AS SOME OF YOU MAY HAVE HEARD HIM BE CALLED…HE HAS BEEN VERY KIND TO ME ALL OF THESE YEARS," this Evil Ryu began. "I HAVE MANAGED TO RETAIN ALL OF MY YOUTH AND POWER SINCE THE 1980S THANKS TO HIM."

All the old ones scratched their heads, not knowing and/or caring what this was all about.

"I…EVIL RYU…WAS THE ONE WHO COMPETED IN THE ORIGINAL FIRST STREET FIGHTER TOURNAMENT, SO LONG AGO. YOU KNOW ME BY MY DISTINCTIVE RED HAIR…"

"Which I totally scumbagged from you while you were gone…booya!" cried Akuma from the corner. He looked at everyone staring at him and put his head down.

"ANYWAYS…I AM THE MOST SELFISH AND CORRUPTIVE ASPECT OF GOOBER, UNLEADED RYU. WHEN I FINISHED IN THE TOURNAMENT, I WANTED MORE POWER…MORE PROMINENCE…MORE…PERSONALITY.

"THE THING IS…JUST AS KEVIN'S ASSOCIATE TROY ONCE SAID, IN HIS CASE ABOUT POWER AND CONTROLLING THE GALAXY…IN ORDER TO HAVE PERSONALITY, YOU CANNOT CONTINUE ON A QUEST TO PURSUE GOOD. YOU HAVE TO…BECOME EVIL.

"THE ONLY WAY I COULD HAVE ANY FLAVOR TO MY CHARACTER, AS SUCH…"

"Alright, alright, we fucking get it!" blurted Heihachi abruptly. "Now get to the part about us being…disposed and all! I'm really curious about this!"

A long, pregnant pause. "OKEY DOKE.

"THE PLACE INTO WHICH YOU HAVE NOW BEEN POSITIONED IS A SYSTEM THAT I DESIGNED WITH TROY'S HELP A LONG TIME BACK, AROUND THE TIME OF THE FIRST OR SECOND IRON FIST TOURNAMENT AND THE…'SUPER' VERSION OF THE SECOND STREET FIGHTING TOURNAMENT. IT IS AN INFERNAL CONTRAPTION OF A CHAMBER DESIGNED TO DISPOSE OF ALL ELDERLY COMBATANTS, WHO HAVE REACHED THE APEX OF THEIR POWER, YET ARE OTHERWISE USELESS TO SOCIETY AND ARE THUS EXPENDABLE VESTIGES. THIS PLACE IS SPECIALLY ARRANGED TO COLLECT ALL GERIATRIC BEINGS IN A RECEPTACLE, LOCATED BENEATH OUR FEET…IT THEN DRAINS THE SPIRITUAL FIGHTING ENERGY AND STORES IT. THIS IS NOT UNLIKE A GIANT COMPACTOR OF GARBAGE, SO WE CHRISTENED IT…THE 'OLD FUCKING FART TRASH COMPACTOR'…OR 'OFFTRAC' FOR SHORT.

"AND YOU ARE ALL TO BE COMPACTED, VERY SUMMARILY.

"AS YOU WOULD SAY YOURSELF, AKUMA—ALTHOUGH THIS TIME, THE SHIT HAS MOST DEFINITIVELY BECOME REAL—WELCOME…TO YOUR DOOM."

"But wait!" cried Wang as he paced back and forth with his hands behind his back (as always). "If this…OFFTRAC is the danger here…then what is the Target we must face?"

Evil Ryu just folded his arms over his chest and harrumphed. "AS YOU WELL KNOW THE PHRASE FROM THE LATEST RUSH ALBUM…THE TARGET IS YOU."

Goober Ryu just furrowed his brow blankly at this, but Wang and Jinpachi nodded as they were hardcore fans of Geddy et al.

"Well, I won't stand for being…compacted!" bumbled Heihachi rebelliously to Evil Ryu. "I'll see you go down…into the receptacle of Hell first, you overalls-wearing-looking spiritual redneck!"

And with that, the once-overlord of the Mishima Zaibatsu charged at the turned SF protagonist, ready and raring to throw down.

"No, Heihachi," said Goober Ryu nobly, squaring himself in front of the Mishima master, "you don't understand the _setsuo no hado_ like I do. As…sketch as you may already seem, no offense, you will be ushered into a new era of corruption if any of you Tekkeners allow yourself near those possessed of the _setsuo_ power. Please…leave this fighting to us Streeters."

The Heiman just shook his triangularly pointy ass hair and set back off towards Wang and his father Jinpachi. "It looks like we only have ourselves to play with," he grunted.

"That's fine," Jinpachi returned, "as we all have an unfinished family reunion to contend with anyway!"

In another part of the compactor, Oni was busy taking on both Gen and Gouken at once. "I feel it is only fitting that we settle this between ourselves," he said, "as we are the most senior here…of the Capcommers, in any case."

"Why are you necessary?" cried Gen as he launched into a small handspring kick that would have caught Oni across the face—but for an abrupt dodge by his opponent. "I mean, isn't Akuma evil enough per se? It's like having Darth Vader, and then 'Deadly Darth Vader.' Like, what the fuck?"

"I am so necessary here!" Oni punctuated this with a rush at the Chinese codger, then a swift clawing motion that might have rent Gen in half were it not for his intense spiritual and physical conditioning. "I can do things that Akuma can't!"

"Like?" Gouken said as he pulled his characteristic jumping spin kick that went about two stories higher than the signature one that Guy perpetrated on the last "planet." This attack caught Oni across the face—and maybe ended up causing a slight toothache to the _setsuo_ entity later on. "You're not my younger brother, you Mozart-maned mockery!"

"Well," put in the ivory-maned entity, as he soared up into the air, then warped down on Gouken with a sharp open-handed punch, "my, umm…victory pose is pretty unique! It shows me grabbing the head of an opponent, and then I do something unshowable to them, like, offscreen and all! It's very rewarding to see, especially when the other guy is someone insufferable, like Deejay!"

Gouken rolled his eyes in near-defeat. "Deejay…should be silenced…I warned him before…"

He then grabbed the semi-bald head of Gouken, with some effort (the old master had a cranial circumference that made Charlie Brown's look like that of a ball bearing), and then: "Observe!"

But Gen would not be having the destruction of an old…acquaintance, at least, if not friend. (Gen and Gouken shared more in common regarding the letters of their names, than any kind of familiarity—there wasn't here the Chinese/Japanese bromance shared between Wang and Jinpachi—but there was still a grudging respect from Gen to Gouken, not unlike the one from Justin to Kelly (meaning, the American Idol rivalry itself—not the abysmal film that fewer people saw than participants in this tournament).

In any case, Gen launched forward with an elbow to Oni's jagged features, just as the demonized Akuma was about to finish Gouken most toastily. This took the monster off his feet, and just as he was rising again, Gen rerouted him to the floor with a series of lightning-handed rapid punches that would later inspire the Chuns's lightning leg.

"You're going down, you superfluous eviler-than-evil!" shouted Gen, as he stood over Oni and did what he could to make eye contact, what with his filmy-ass peepers and all.

Unfortunately, Oni indeed could see matters much clearer than his Chinese combatant counterpart, as the evil entity reached his feet with lightning speed, grabbed his enemy, and punched away at him with one open hand, then did the same on the other side, getting Gen down to ground level in no time.

As Oni turned…

"I hate to have to resort to anything less than completely honorable," cried Gouken as he gathered the insidious imitation of his brother up into his hand, then threw him over his shoulder, "but you cannot stop me!" Gouken endstopped this throw with a reinforcing kick that shunted Oni away all the more. And just as the evil being reached his feet once more, Gouken terminated the tussle with a devastating open-handed thrust of his own.

"Although I despise this caterwauling copy of my already-abhorrent brother…I cannot allow any life to be ended…much less compacted…here, if I can help it."

But the ship of a shape into which the geezers were gathered didn't seem to give a fig about anything the grand Gouken had to say, as suddenly the floor began to collapse beneath all the warriors. Gouken quickly scooped up the downed Oni in one hand, and Gen in the other as he leapt for higher platforms in the chamber.

The others scrambled for large disclike platforms that started circulating around the bottom of the chamber, and they continued their tussles from there. Goober Ryu and Akuma were busy jumping between discs in an attempt to get at Evil Ryu. Akuma commenced by rushing at the hillbilly-hadouken-hoarder and grabbing the enemy, then heart-punching the opponent away from him.

"Careful," chided Goober, catching up with Akuma. "As base as you may be…you will become another Oni if you indulge in too much fury with this foe."

"You fool!" cried Akuma, as he executed a spin kick against his apparent ally, then another as the better Ryu was reeling. "Oni IS me! He's like the evil…second player version of me! You know how that shit works! Don't you think it's a bit weird that you're all standing here near an Evil RyOOOF!"

The Akster's going on and on was met with a downward punch, up close, by the Goobernatorial hero who got to his feet with record speed. The gooder, Goober Ryu followed this up with a body punch that registered two strikes against Akuma.

"You don't know me," said Goober with great resolve as he stood over the downed Akuma. "You don't know what I'm capable of…either me, or my eviler self."

And with that, he set off for his hick-er half. Evil Ryu met this with a flaming jab to the face, which the Goobs ducked readily. Evil then set in with a forward chop that looked a lot sloppier than anything the other Ryu ever perpetrated, which the better Ryu easily rolled away from. Finally, the Evil one came in with a jumping uppercut, to which Goober finally launched his classic shoryuken, the jumping-around rising fist catching Evil Ryu potently in the perineum. (Trust me; this isn't a good place to be punched).

As the body of the revenging redneck rendition of Ryu reached the disc on which he was doing battle with the other combatants, the Good Goober pumped onto his platform as well, to ensure that the enemy would not get back up again. Suddenly the hero, as well as some of the old farts all around him, were entranced as they heard, broadcast over what must have been speakers in the chamber, a horrifically heady account of one man's plunge into perdition.

The problem was that the narrative was so numbingly tedious that the elderly began to look beneath them to the chasm yawning open, which yielded to the compacting machinery below—and they actually considered dropping themselves into it.

"YES," viciously urged a voice behind the Goober, as the good one first noticed the widening abyss below, "GIVE YOURSELVES CORPOREALLY TO THE COMPACT…UGGGHHHHH!"

And then Evil Ryu was once more taken off his feet by Akuma, who threw him down roughly and sent him into oblivion with a sharp chop to the back. "No one apes my line," he grunted as he gathered himself away from the haughty hadoukening hayseed who was Evil Ryu. "Only *I* say when someone is welcome to his or her doom!"

The Akumator and the Goobernator continued to shift on their moving discs as, below, Wang was doing all he could to keep the Hachimen from suiciding themselves over the story they were hearing ever so miserably.

"Please…Hei…Jin…" Wang pleaded, tugging at each of the men as they tried to jump off their discs, "you all have been around for decades upon decades…his story isn't that bad!"

But the truth was that the temptation to jump was sirenic in nature, as it was a Strakerstriker who was telling his story, simultaneously, in another chamber of the ship, after so many battles which were going on concurrently. And this Strakerstriker was not unlike another Striker who, in a deadpan feature so many years ago, could bore his story audiences into near, or actual, suicide with the interminability of the tale.

"No!" cried Heihachi as he headbutted Wang back repeatedly, just as the Mishima main man would take down Jacks with similar cranium crushes. "It is our destiny to fall in this way!"

Jinpachi too struck back with a tusked arm that caught Wang across the forehead. "Old friend…I know of our history…but this torment is intolerable…"

Desperately, Wang said nothing more, but just jumped up, got his hands around Jinpachi's shoulders, and threw his opponent in the opposite direction. The force and momentum of this sent not only Jinpachi, but also his son Heihachi fully back onto discs hovering just above the abyss.

"You'll suffer…for cheating us…of our honorable end," muttered Heihachi miserably as he reached for Wang, secured him in a headlock, and subjected him to the most brutal electrified noogie ever conceived by man. When he was floored onto his disc, Jinpachi followed up with a leap onto Wang's platform and a rough step roughshod over the old man, which took that much more energy out of the elderly Chinese contender.

"Why…you, especially, Jinpachi…Jinpach…"

Heihachi then hauled up to execute a levitating power bomb on Wang, to finish him; however,

Wang found resolve after seeing a light of recognition in his old friend's eyes, and he pulled off a tight jump and punch forward which made Heihachi double over. He then followed up with a rising fist, then a descending blow with the same hand, finishing with one more rising strike from the same side.

The younger Mishima was not to be daunted by such geriatric combinations, however. With a flourish Heihachi grabbed Wang and put in the power bomb, leaving Jinrei gasping for air on the surface of his disc.

"Not bad, huh, old man?!" crowed Heihachi, really to his father from over his shoulder. He then looked over his shoulder to grunt his crotchety "Next!" cry when he noted Jinpachi inhaling melodramatically behind him.

Heihachi spun around just in time to see his father fire off his impossibly cheap energy wave, which abruptly blew his son off his disc and into the compactor below.

"It was…what he wanted anyway," explained Jinpachi to his old friend, as he tended to Wang on the disc. "It's still what I want, too."

"Jinpachi…no…"

"Wang…I wish it could have ended on that wasteland at the end of the Fifth Iron Fist…or at least at that most honorable of arenas…"

Wang just looked at his friend, not understanding. "You mean…the Japanese fortress in the Dark Resurrection tourney that constantly sounds like someone's belching in the background?"

Jinpachi continued, steadily, "No, my generations-long friend, but close…I was referring to the Nightclub Venue of the Stationarily Dancing Bimbos. At least during that same Dark Rendition of that grand, warmly-Introduced and Epilogued Iron Fist of yore.

"Anyway, my son still has a place here," continued Jinpachi, tiredly. "And actually, now that I think about it…I'm not going to be as bad as him. I'm not going to send my son into a chasm, as he did with Kazuya so long ago. I'm a manlier Mishima than my misbegotten son!"

"JINPACH…!"

And just as Wang cried out, Jinpachi jumped off the disc into the compactor below as well. Wang hunched over the side of his disc to see the ensuing explosion, which almost rocked him and the Street Fighters off their precarious platforms. Emanating up from the chasm was not only fire and concussive force, but also a weathered Heihachi Mishima as well, who clung now to the side of a rotating disc himself.

"His power…it was enough…to satisfy the compactor and more…it ended up vomiting me out as a result."

Wang looked leerily over as Heihachi said all of this. He wished that his old friend had stayed with the more honorable, dust-collapsing end that he met at the end of the Fifth Iron Fist, instead of this fart-fighting farce. But Jinpachi's fate was all the same in the end.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: TARGET VERSUS EVERYONE FRIGGIN ELSE

Matters were manic in this last, vicious, and overly viridian area. What was most maddening, more than anything, was the irritating and incessant theme in the background.

That and the fact that after the Almighty decided to come back to announce one last round, it just ended up being "GET READYYYYYY…FOR THE NEXT BATTLE (ATTLE… ATTLE… ATTLE… ATTLE… ATTLE…) followed by about twenty-five minutes of waiting for the impact sound in strained silence, at which point the warriors just cussed, gave up the paused pose, and started on in in exasperation.

"If we don't take out this purple poser within the next several seconds, with all this Sixth-Announcer-Forsaken music blaring on and on," said Paul Phoenix, minutes later, as he pounded a hard right hook into the face of the Basher Reappearance in the area, "I'm going to go completely insane…moreso than I usually come off as."

"What the hell kind of name is Paul Phoenix?!" cried the mauve monster as he let fly with one of his aerially retractive fists once more. The punchy projectile whizzed past Paul's ear as the latter came back and kneed the one of many Targets in the face. "What the eff kind of 'ashes' are you rising from?!"

Paul couldn't believe this thing was still going on and on, even as it was crumpling to the ground from his strikes. "How the hell are you still going? You should have been lain out flat in the middle of this workout!" And then the warrior punctuated it all with an over-the-shoulder throw that indeed resulted in Basher's being bolted down onto his back. At least for a moment.

Just as the crimson cretin that was Paul trundled forward in an attempt to attack his opponent while down, his enemy whisked himself away. "I'm getting while things are good," Basher babbled as he moved over to where another opponent was. "All I have to do is beat one of you, after all!"

And this was indeed the case—at this point, it was more or less sudden death, as all the fighters in this one last megaarena had to follow the new rule that once ONE Street Fighter or Tekkener was knocked down…ALL would go to the aliens. At the same time, the Targets in question could circulate from one Capcommer or Namcoer at will, in order to 'chop around' to find that they thought were the easiest marks to knock down.

"Oh, you might find that Kicks and Punches here are a bit less of a challenge, as I am, after all, the Strongest in the Universe," called Paul after the fleeing Target. "But they're not MUCH more of pushovers!"

"Yeah," cried Bruce as he limbered himself up, watching Basher swing his way, "I'm your worst…"

Fortunately this Stallone-stolen opening line of his was cut off as the alien enemy bashed him in the face a bit more quickly than the muay thaier had expected. Unfortunately for the Bashman, this would be the only strike he would score on Bruce Irvin.

The kickboxer immediately found his feet anew and rushed at the lavender lecher from the Straight Striker. Reaching him, Bruce grabbed at his simian cranium and let one fly in his foe's face with a brutal knee strike. "I have to agree with Paul, though…this music, it's relentless…and compulsively crazily crappy."

The old champ then executed a critical spinning backhand into the face of the fuchsia fucker that was Basher, knocking him down once more. "I'd rather listen to Mishima propaganda playing out over and over, while I was in the mercenary employ of friggin Kazuya, than subject myself to this theme!" Bruce finished with another grab of the Bash's head, followed by a knee to the body.

This belted the opponent away from the kickboxer, giving Basher a moment to abscond one more time. "Sorry…King's X," the alien enemy said, a little wearily to Bruce as he grappling-hooked away once more, "but I can't let your superfly supershine mohawked ass get me any more than it already has."

But then, of a sudden…

"Well, then, (sst sst sst), let this mulleted white boy, (sst sst sst), do you a few punches proud!"

The wisteria weakling that was Basher was then suddenly unceremoniously donkey punched in the back of the head by the scrappy Steve Fox—a couple times, actually, as the pugilist let fly with a couple of left jabs followed by a right hook before the enemy could even turn around. The latter was sporting his Union Jack boxers in his bid to beat the beyond-Earth baddies, and especially now he was in rare form. Steve was so sick, too, of being around creepy, overbearing labs all his life—given that he was somehow the test tube child of Nina Williams, that he wanted out of this jade jail more than anyone. (And how Nina—who should by rights be called Venus Williams the Second, for all of her beauty—could sire such a bleahface as Steve…she must have been forced to procreate with Kuma, basically.)

"C'mere! (sst sst sst)," Steve taunted, grabbing his enemy just as he did another three of his quick rushing breaths as he always did while boxing, walking, eating, daydreaming, sleeping, and otherwise existing. The Tekkenite then struck the opponent with an overhead strike that slapped Basher down to the ground.

The Target shucked himself back up one more time to face the Fox, but again once the violet varmint reached his toes, Steve lunged in once more. "Can't (sst sst sst) let (sst sst sst) you (sst sst sst) do (sst sst sst) that." And grabbing the enemy one more time, Steve pulled off a body blow and threw the thing over his shoulder, resulting in a knockdown and submission by the Bashy One.

"Yeah, about this music (sst sst sst)!" remarked Steve, as the three Namcoers stood over the defeated form of their foe. "It's like…(sst sst sst) Cinderella or something. Like the Fairy Godmother (sst sst sst) song. Bibbidy Bobbidy Boo and stuff.

"(sst sst sst)."

"I…I think I know the one you mean," said Bruce, "the notes before the theme here loops…yeah, it's like, compulsive notes and then at the end of it it sounds like it goes 'Bibbidy Bobbidy Boo!' It's pretty goofy."

Paul was no longer into giving a shit about the music, actually, as he resumed fully being into himself. Manically—and predictably, of course—he jumped up on a platform in the corner of their cramped arena and belted out:

"YEAH, I'M THE ONE! I'M THE STRONGEST!

"COME AND GET ME, YA ALIENS!"

So it was just one more now, this excuse for an alien that was Basher, that Paul had to put down before pwning the remainder of the galaxy. He really had his work cut out for him now…

In another chamber, much of the same brawling was transpiring…though not as much of the same level of banter.

Some banter was still extant, though.

"You cannot stop Telepork...especially when he is with his twin brother…BLOINK!"

"Bloink?! Are you effing serious?!" Marduk wanted to upchuck at the enemy closest to him, balking at the name which must have combined the "Blink" name associated with disappearing or teleporting in some video games and comic books with the usual cry of a porcine organism. Whatever the name of the comer, though, Craig Marduk was sure to take him down duly.

To be sure, the Mardman now took what looked like a giant step forward, but was actually a halting kind of downward kick that struck Telepork in his floppy-eared head, making the enemy clutch at his midsection in pain of course. The wrestlers here, including Craig and the all-too-familiar pair of leopards in leotards with regal names, were striking out so quickly at the hoggy horrors around them that their Targets had no time to teleport around, or even spout their blue blazes either.

The poor Telepork really had to grab at his stomach a second later as Marduk—who in this Capcomverse resembled more of a retarded Axel Hawk from the SNKverse than his usual bald behemoth self—leaned in with a double-handed strike that shook the thing's insides. The Target then started to generate his surrealist-looking swirls around him, as if he were going to vanish…

…but the quick Marduk grasped at his side, brought him up, and then down again on his leg so that it crushed the thing out of consciousness.

"AHHHHHHHHHH!" arrogantly cried the King-cohort that was Craig as he spread his arms around and hopped around, kind of gayly, on one foot. He then looked to the lions in the room, playing with their own pig. "You literal CATS need any assistance over there?"

"AHRC AHRC AHRC," replied the original King, unintelligibly to the average layperson, as he pulled a hard-swinging hook or two on this…Bloink character, then struck thirdly with a spinning hook that knocked the poor porker down. The Target barely managed to get to his boarish toes before King's Armored counterpart—who was actually a THIRD Armor King, beyond the two in our mainstream universe, but no less mysterious in identity—put the Target down again with a harsh back kick.

The fierce felines continued to take their turns as Marduk, a mortal foe to at least one of them, now looked on like an approving uncle. King struck with a sideways double-legged drop kick; Armor King with a forward handspringing kick. Now Armor King with his grab of Bloink's purple garb, aligning with the alien, and then driving the enemy into his knee; now King with a jump onto the side of his opponent and throwing him in the opposite direction.

No extraterrestrial tag team could take on the titans of the Tekken jungle that were the twin Kings and Craig Marduk. The three celebrated their win by throwing up their arms in triumph and grabbing each other's shoulders more warmly and homoerotically than any icebreaking acquaintances in the Solo Straight Striker. Armor King was so happy, for once—apparently inebriated with the excitement—that he even shunted his mask right off in front of the both of his allies.

"I…I can't believe it!" cried Craig, pointing in wonder. "It's…you! I can't believe that…after all this time…Armor King…is actually…"

As Marduk couldn't articulate as well as his future X Crossover tournament buddy anyway, it was better that King finished the sentence. "AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC AHRC," gushed King, revealing the identity of the third, alternate universe Armor King after so long and reveling in it, as certainly as this author and the reader were as of this instant.

In one more general chamber of the initial entries of the tournament endgame…

"Would you say, with a foe like thisssss," slurred out Anna Williams ever so slinkily to her sister, as the brutal brunette cast out her hands in what looked like an open-faced kata-kind of strike, "that it's 'time to die'…or 'time to douche'…?"

"You are always trusted to be tasteless," muttered Anna's flaxen-follicled sibling as, once the sienna-haired streetwalker's blow registered against the reincarnation of Mollustar, Nina approached the thing and unloaded with a forehand slap in its…nose-seeming protuberance, then a backhand…followed by another punishing, gratifying forehand.

"Ooh," cooed Anna as Nina seemingly went to town, "you look as if you're really…rubbing one of-, er—I mean, of course, rubbing it in—with that overly ginormous purple clam, sis."

"Go to hell, Anna."

"Here," the darker-maned Williams said, pushing past her sister a second, "let me get some more licks in with this…TAINTed alien." She then took her own turn slapping the Target silly with her own open-handed blows.

"You two are pretty pervy, you know that?" pepped up Christie from the corner, as she was relegated to Balrogging in the background, going and taking out the various pink stars that were floating around. Here she moved forward into a cartwheel kick against one, there she planted one hand on the ground and kicked out at another five-pointer with a foot flying over her own head, there she even grabbed one between her feet, as she would with the shoulders of a humanoid enemy, and threw the thing over her head. "I mean, I'm just screwing around with these stars over here…but you two, you're…screwing…"

"Yeah, the two of us are having some fun with this here orgas—I mean, organism," said Anna as she flipped Mollustar around and kicked it in its clammy posterior. She then stepped aside and beckoned to Nina. "Go ahead, sis…you always were the heroine around here…you finish things."

"Christie, Capcom deserves this perverse spin on this whole setup," explained the blonder Williams bruiser as she approached the alien and began to tap her foot. "I mean, come on; eyeballs that extend from a ceiling—and from a small, semicircular pocket—by way of a long, narrow stalk? Floating clams that are surrounded by snakes—at least there were snakes in the Europe leg just now—shooting up stiffly from the ground? Someone with half a poetic mind would see that as a metaphor for the manic pursuit of one girl's…you know…goodies, by a bunch of raring, randy young gentleme…"

All this was met by the blankest look ever from the scantily-clad-yet-cloyingly-innocent-seeming Christie Monteiro.

"Ahh, the hell with it."

And then Nina lashed out, right in the brain-face of Mollustar, with the most capital "bad habit" kick that she ever executed in her entire fighting or spying career.

A couple of levels up in the giant green arena scene—in one of the control rooms overlooking the entire run of final stages—a rather large and burly man in a white undershirt, suspenders, and khaki shorts hunched over some screens, giving his obligatory two cents to the commencing of some fights here and there.

"ARRRRRE YOU READY?!" the boorish and beastly Super Arcade man boomed as he sweated over the mike. "FIGHT!

Then, so many seconds later: "WILL THE TIDE OF BATTLE TURN?! FIGHT!"

Then, minutes later: "DESTINATION CONFIRMED!"

"Nhheeheah," squeaked a voice from the corner, making the barrel-chested bawler of a brawl caller whirl around. "Ihheah think we all already know what the dehehestination is. You don't neeheed to confihirmrm it."

"Damn it, you," said the Super Arcade Announcer, "you knew that I was slated for these final rounds. They wanted ME, not you. I don't even know why you're here.

"Shouldn't you be…FUCKING AROUND IN SOUTH AMERICA, or BLOWING YOUR BRAINS OUT IN OCEANIA?!" Even while personally threatening somebody one-to-one, the Super Arcade one couldn't keep his vociferating energy level down.

"Stohhop being so huhuffy," said the nerdy ass Original Announcer of the Fourth Streetfighting Tournament. "Yohhoure gonna need all the ehenehrgy youhoo have to fahahace me."

"PSSSH," sniffed the Super Arcade, as he turned back—most unwisely—to his obnoxious commentating. That Original once-was couldn't take him, not for a sec…

[WHAPP]

And then the rotund replacement round caller found himself rocked to the floor as something had struck him hard on the side of the head. A second later he found the oafish Original Announcer standing over him with what appeared to be—what, wooden boards?!—that appeared to be vaguely familiar….from something special from long ago.

"Nnhhheheah," taunted the Original, "you've just been beaheaheaten down by…bohohonus stage bohohoards!"

It was then that Super Arcade noticed that they were indeed the bonus stage boards from the First Street Fighter Tournament—ones which only the Caveman Ken, or that crazed Hillbilly Ryu from long ago, would have broken.

And then it was after that that the replacement announcer reached behind the far edge of the announcing controls at which he once sat…and produced several large, wooden barrels—one of which he began to brandish over his head.

"YOU THINK I DON'T COME WITH MY OWN BONUS MATERIAL?!" he shouted, coming off like even more of a human Donkey Kong at this moment than Wreck-It-Fucking-Ralph. "LET'S GET STARTED…_FIGHT!_"

The unwieldy wooden containers then took flight as they made their way towards the Original Announcer's head, one after the other. For sure, Super Arcade believed for a few fleeting moments, his far inferior rival would be finished.

And for sure, the Original himself thought, his own ploy to assassinate Super Arcade and go apeshit on the establishment here in Steelhull would grind to an untimely halt. But a couple of factors intervened to…TURN THE TIDE, indeed, as the latter Fourth Tourney announcer would shout.

For one, Original began accessing some sort of manly adrenalin stored up, pent up all his existence, which he never before tapped. With this, he took his First Tournament bonus boards and whapped away like no warrior's business at the barrels being tossed his way. Were these containers made of metal, like Guy's precious children, and were the Final Fighter here right now, he might have cried himself into a coma to see such finely-crafted barrels being demolished into dust. But there the Original one was now, one after another.

"CAN YOU HANDLE MORE THAN TWENTY?!" screamed Super Arcade, once his improvised bonus stage officially ended. There was no way he was going to let this scrawny creep prevail.

But then, as the later caller reached for some more barrels, Original took the initiative. He slid across the floor, shyly on his stomach, but then rose up and slapped at Super Arcade again and again, here on the back of the leg, here on the back of the neck, here, of course, on the rear end, reddening the burly man's buttocks but good.

"TIME'S UP!" Super Arcade proclaimed as he swung a meaty arm backward, knocking the Original to the floor once more. He hefted one more barrel overhead, determined to retire the first caller for the Fourth Tournament for all time.

Then another kind of object struck the massive man on the back of the head, and he thundered to the floor (thankfully not on top of Original), completely out cold.

Original craned his weary head up to see a much older man, thin and wizened, holding one of the red tiles from the power-chop bonus stage of the First Tournament. He held up the thumb of the hand not holding the tile, and gave the slack-jawed gaping-mouthed face of triumph that Redneck Evil Ryu gave way back then, when he managed to chop all the tiles.

"Thahahahnks," squealed the Original Fourth Announcer. "Fohohor the bohohoards, as well as the assississt just now.

"WAWAWAWAWA," was all the other announcer could say back. He was already difficult to understand back in the time of the First Tournament, and old age only made this even more difficult. Now, if he were to hold a conversation with King, the average outsider to the Capcomverse and Namcoverse who listened in would be the most lost emeffer ever.

Through the older announcer, though, Original learned that despite the disgruntled dork's design to destroy so many at Steelhull itself, Super Arcade had an ever more insidious agenda: he was honestly going to siphon and store as much cyboplasm as he could in the barrels he brought over, then he was going to overdose on it and secretly assassinate each Street Fighter until he became not only the best in the world, but the only one in the world.

And Original unwittingly thwarted it all.

"So I'm a hehehero?!" he cried out, and yelped with delight when the First Announcer nodded.

"WAWAWAWHAT STWAWAWAWRENGTH! AND BRWAWAWAVERY!" the old one said, encouragingly. He then qualified it, though: "BWAWAWWAWUT DON'T FORGET THAT THWEWEWERE ARE MANY ANNWAWAWAWAOUNCERS LIKE YOU AWAWAWAWAWAWAWWWWW OWWWWWAWAWAVER THE WAWAWAWAWAORLD."

It was mostly reminiscent of an old line he prompted every downed fighter to say, once the redheaded (and soon to be rednecked) Ryu rolled right over his opponent.

Original looked down humbly, but retained a slight grin in spite of himself. "Sohohohoho tell me, First Wawawa Announcer…what are thehehehey all up to now?"

And in the ensuing minutes, the Originals had a pleasant go round—over the unconscious form of the Super Arcade assmunch—regarding the way in which Joe was now painting trains, and might be considering taking his art over to the Castro District in Frisco; Mike was an extreme tourist (and pugilist) at Mount Rushmore…and his favorite targets were people who asked him if he were Balrog's BFF; Geki was giving secret manicures to Vega on occasion; Retsu was formulating a diet plan for Gouken, so that the latter baldy could hopefully slim down to the figure of the former; and Lee…well, Lee was just trying to stay as far away from his generic-ass nephews as he possibly could so that he could retain some OG street cred, though there were times when even the effing Great Wall couldn't keep them away.

In yet another chamber of the observatory confines along the top of the great green hallways, another announcer, from the other side of the fighting crossoververse, was congratulating himself on his elaborate scheme to corner the Iron Fist calling racket all for his very own.

"Pretty good, Steven, I must say," the non-chidren's-programming Mister Rogers told himself, "get that Dark Resurrection schmoe to terminate God's employment…then wait for the inevitable Old Testament retribution from our Lord…then of course, just like the Deist deity from centuries ago, the divine presence is involved for a bit, then he loses interest and walks away…leaving ME left with the lion's share of the rounds to call. Not a bad plan if I may say so myself.

"Well," he told himself as he neared the microphone, ready to go once more, "I guess it's time for some more of those poor fools down there to GEHHET REHHEADY FOR THE NEHHEXT BA…"

[SCRRREEEEEECCCHHH]

Suddenly Cap found himself jerked around in his chair and staring down the adorable almond eyes of a very, very mad marsupial mother.

"IKK IKK IKK IKK IKK! (Translation: "You're the Iron Fist Five Announcer…Steve ROGERs…are you not?!")

"I…I don't know what you want from me, lady…" the Captain said, shakily, as he stumbled from his chair. Where was his shield…it couldn't have been too too far…

"IKK IKK IKK IKK IKK! (Translation: "I know, from what my son learned from the Crustac things…you're behind the kidnapping of the REAL rendition of my husband!")

But the American Captain wasn't trying to hear any of this. He knew how hellish a _spurned_ spouse could be—but _this_ one was not scorned but rather screwed over, royally.

And by none other than one of the kangas' most trusted confidantes.

"IKK IKK IKK IKK IKK! (Translation: "I'm going to fucking stomp a billabong in your backside, Crapton America!")

"Alright, alright," the superhero relented as he crouched behind the furthest edge of a table situated between himself and Mrs. Roger, Cap primed to use his shield at the right moment. "It was…Dr. Bosconovitch, okay? The greatest scientist I've met since Erskine."

"IKK IKK IKK IKK IKK! (Translation: "Get the fuck out of here. Dr. B would never railroad us roos like that.")

"It's true…your husband…he had no role in it…" the Captain said, having now about summoned all the nerve he would need against this most mortal of enemies. "The whoring Roger roo…the one who was so horribly misbehaved in the outcomes of the Fifth and Sixth Tourneys…he was a clone."

Before Mrs. Roger could IKK out again, Steve Rogers once more: "The real Roger is still somewhere…another one of Dr. B's satellite labs back in the Namcoverse…you'll have to go get him in another Tekken sequel…perhaps a spinoff, like Death by Deg…"

"IKK IKK IKK IKK IKK! (Translation: "And we all know how THAT piece of koala crap turned out!")

Mrs. Roger then flipped, both physically and mentally, her kangaroo legs upturning the entire table separating her from her prey as she went.

"Your guy—the REAL Roger—I brought him back to Dr. B on a silver platter! Just like…this! SHIELD SLASH!" the Captain shouted as he chucked his shield viciously at his cantankerous kangaroo nemesis. When the woman wallaby ducked the projectile, Cap rushed at her: "It was all in the name of the Super 'Supial Program—the plan to build the perfect 'roo—far more advanced than you aboriginal underachievers! How do you think I got such a good gig with the Iron Fist Tourneys as I did, after getting your Roger to where he is now? A great reward for a job well done…you know you have to believe me, as after all I AM Steve ROGEROOOFFF…"

This last after Mrs. Roger kicked him hard in the chest. "IKK IKK IKK IKK IKK! (Translation: "You've been so smug, too, all this time…it's time for someone…or someroo…to put you in your assfucking place!")

And then it turned out that, in truth, Mrs. Roger was not the only one who wanted this for selfish, stilted Steve. As he stood there, stiffly and constipatedly awaiting an opening against his kangapponent, the ground beneath burned at his feet, causing him to skip most unmasculinely out of the way. In the place where he stood puffed-up-edly a second ago arose a series of beetlelike creatures, who made after him in a crawling, skittering formation. These were not unlike the bluish-purple things that occupied endless pillars and vines throughout a crewcutted creep's quest back in 2010.

"Unlike the feature in which I managed to get away from America's most infamous prison," grunted a voice from the beyond, which Rogers recognized as the (now seemingly literally) Darkly-Resurrected announcer known as Eastwood, "you won't be able to ESCAPE FROM ENTORRIDS!"

_IKK IKK IKK IKK IKK,_ thought Mrs. Roger…er, sorry: (Translation: "Entorrids…aren't those like the boils on someone's derrie…well, whatever those insectlike things are, they sure _are_ tearing at the Crapton's ass as we speak!)

"You feel lucky, PINKO?!" the voice went on as the Captain continued to literally get it up the ass from the Entorrids, the inflection sounding directly from the netherworld. This last fired Steve up more than ever, as the implicit accusation that he was anything but a symbol of freedom, democracy, and Capcomitalism (defined as endless money-grubbing from gouging hapless gamers) had really gotten under his skin.

Thoroughly maddened, Steve Rogers reached his enemy and swung hard at Mrs. Roger's head with a few haymakers, but Mrs. Roger ducked down into her pouch a second, coming up an instant later with an uppercut that floored her enemy. The Captain, in a second's passing, flailed away at his foe once more with his patented STARS and STRIPES…but the Missus was more than ready for him.

"IKK IKK IKK IKK IKK! (Translation: "COCKS…AND…CROCS!")

What followed this through was Mrs. Roger's own deadly combination of boxing glove blows, long-footed kicks, and basically a miniature dutch-ovening of Cap's head in her pouch.

And Roger, Jr. hadn't cleaned up after himself since his last ride in there, either.

As the Fifth-Iron-Fist-Tournament-Announcing Captain America willowed to the ground, thoroughly taken to school and thinking of alligators and phalluses after his enemy's last statement, while Mrs. Roger allowed herself a bit of a grin, as she knew that that was probably what the Captain was considering at this very moment.

Of course, though, as any Australian would tell you, there were a ton of "cocks" there—cockatiels flew around in the wild—making it the REAL reason why anyone should ever want to go Down Under.

Speaking of going down and under, a few levels below in the green gargantua that was this final area, a billowy blonde babe and a bulky blond-cum-failed fauxhawk stalked the halls, searching for someone critical to both their futures.

"You…you say that the man I've been spending all these years with…he's not really my…my Guile?!" said Julia Jane again, unable to accept that her true love had been taken from her all this time. "The man in my bed…he's been…"

"Yes, Mrs. G," said Abel awkwardly in his sometimes-French accent, "you have been with not your man, but a scam for the past score of years. I am sorry."

"Well, I won't rest until we REALLY find my Gui-Gui!"

Abel continued on with his anal, steely-blue stare as he escorted the Coolblow's baby through the darkened passages. Finally they came upon the one whom they were supposed to meet up with, at the scheduled time.

"Ahh…Abel…

"And JULIA?!"

Danson Guile at first turned solidly and warmly, ready to receive his battling buddy from the Froggy Frontier of France…but he never thought his old lady was going to be tagging along. "It's…it's not safe for you here, JJ…you need to get away, get somewhere safe before the Target gets…"

"The Target's already here…'Guile.'" Abel thrust his arms out in his usual Fourth Tournament battle stance, but instead of open hands, he put fingers out there making air quotes, to accentuate his sarcasm underlying the idea that this soldier was who he said he was.

Danson blanched at this. "I…I don't know what you're talking about, Abel."

"The video game's up, my supposed Street Fighter. We all know that you're not the good guy here…or the good Guile either, for that matter."

"You have crammed down one too many crusty croissants, my friend. When we look to the corner over there," said the Danson double, pointing to one nook in the room, "and we see the Target emerge, we will be straight on who it is we're fighting."

A tense moment; then:

[BLANT…BL-BLANT, BL-BLANT…PLEHPLEHPLEHPLEHPLEHPLEH]

"I don't…believe…NO."

Emerging from the whitish-blue portal was the ever-skinnier self of what was none other than what Blanka best dubbed him a few "planets" of continental tournament legs ago:

The Original Gangsta Coolblow Guile.

"GASP! GUI-GUI!"

Abel tried to lunge for Julia Jane, shouting after her…

"NOOOOO…DON'T TRUST THAT SUNGLASS-ASS-TUCKING FUCKER!"

… but the lady was already sprinting for the man whose lovely, thin face she had adored—and had missed, fervently, since 1991.

Unfortunately, the Danson one did not miss with his own lunge, and soon he had the other Guile's soulmate clutched threateningly in his arms.

"TAKE ANOTHER STEP, EITHER OF YOU, AND I'LL SNAP HER NECK!" the false Guile cried, starting to lift Julia Jane into the air by the neck with one hand. Coolblow was frozen, afraid…terrified that one false step could lead to the loss of another loved one…another Charlie.

Abel too stopped a second.

But then he started again…or rather, something else's "starting" did the trick. Marshalling all of his freaky-fauxhawked-foreign-man courage, as well as the muscles in his throat, Abel, a second later:

_ "MIZHOU STUHT!" _

That was it, the Danson Man's kryptonite: the idiotic, imbecilic cry by Abel, which he began doing not long ago, and which he would continue to do in an alternate reality during the Street X Tekken Tourney, much to the dismay of his American soldier partner—the Frog's stealing Guile's "Mission Start" statement and sounding like a total pusstard in the process.

It proved effective indeed here, however, as the Danson One's eyes now bugged out, his mouth shot open, and his grip on Julia Jane relaxed just enough for her to breathe and squirm around. She took full advantage now, reaching down her captor's back and into the seat of his pants, for what she knew fully was disgustingly down there.

Gripping the besoiled glasses she was three hundred percent sure were there, JJ shucked them out of the crack of her alleged crack-operative impostor spouse and held them for a second over her head. Then, once Danson's shocked eyes met hers, she fitted to form one of her real husband's archaic sayings—the one about returning to one's origins, marrying, and raising children:

"GO TO HELL AND BE A FECES MOUTH!"

Julia Jane then thrust the shades deep into the throat of Danson, bowel-business-end first. The eww-inspiring eyewear strangled the Dans Man while Julia Jane's fine form fell to the floor, the girl getting away as fast as her feminine feet could take her.

"COOLBLOW, NOW! COME ON!"

Abel wasted no time in executing one of his front/sideways flip kicks that clocked Danson across the face. Danson struck the ground, then, finally spitting out his literally sodden sunglasses, rose back up to bicycle kick the fighting Frenchy in the face. But the false soldier was immediately met thereafter with a one-two consecutive-leg sweep kick by Coolblow which put Danson down once more.

The fake Fighter reached his feet a second later, leaping forward with some hopping spin kicks which both his opponents easily dodged. Danson was losing it, without a doubt; after all, there was just something about having Number Two lodged in one's throat that kept a person from being Number One. Abel charged up a shoulder to ram straight into the Danson double, while Coolblow came forth to follow up with one of his "look at the back of my military wifebeater" backhand punches.

For one last time, Danson redoubled his strength and forced himself into a crouch. He kept it for what seemed to be a second longer than he needed to hold it.

"CRUSHER CROUTON…LOOK OUT!" shouted Coolblow in warning to Abel. "HE'S GONNA RAZO…"

But Danson already flashed up, the edge of his foot just flitting past the face of the French Fighter as the razor kick fully went off. Fortunately for Abel, the original Ess Eye Enn instilled within him gave him the reflexes he required to survive this scrape, and a second later he reached in and grabbed the Dans Man.

"I don't know if you were able to _break_ wind while you literally put the 'ass' in 'glasses,'" cracked Abel, as he started the gyrations of his killer rotational throw, "but I'm going to make some wind of my own now…to sort of…CLEAR THE AIR a little!"

And with that, the French effer rattled Danson a few times over his head with only his arms, then chucked the double against the far end of the arena. Julia Jane winced from the near end, partly from a tiny bit of pity at the phony soldier who posed as her husband, but mostly from the inept quipping that Abel was perpetrating.

"Clear the…psssh," Coolblow chuffed. Then he started waving away both his wife and his new, impromptu ally. "Crouton…don't clear the air…clear the AREA! Get JJ SAFE!"

Nodding brusquely, Abel hurried himself as well as Julia Jane back into one of the previous peridot hallways of the arena grounds. Now it was just a soldiering Coolblow Guile and his masquerading Cheers-reject counterpart. The former pumped his arms in preparation while the latter staggered around helplessly.

"Now the Coolblow…is gonna cut you in on the RAINBOW."

"SONIC…SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… SONIC… "

Flinging his arms repeatedly now towards his impersonating enemy, the original gangsta Guile cut loose with as many golden projectiles as the esoteric Rainbow edition of the Second Fighter Tournament would allow him—which was basically an infinite amount. Soon the entire chamber became saturated with sonic booms, and Danson Guile became less like a losing fighting contestant and more like the mother at the end of the film version of Stephen King's _Carrie_, his body being impaled again and again with sharp, deadly flying items careening in at him from all sides.

[KSSSH KSSSH KSSSH KSSSH KSSSH KSSSH KSSSH KSSSH KSSSH KSSSH KSSSH KSSSH KSSSH

KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS KSS]

[EAUGH-UGH-UGH-UGH-UGH-UGH!]

The pretender to the Phantom Throw finally fell as Danson Guile now not so much actually collapsed to the ground as just…disintegrated under all the pressure from said battalion of sonic booms.

A minute or two later, Abel and Julia Jane dared to peek around the corner of the chamber.

"GUI-GUI!"

Abel stood by, stiffly yet happily as he watched the Coolblow comfort and embrace his shaken wife. He then approached the two after they hugged and kissed several times, and settled down a bit.

"What happens now?" asked the Frog, his scarred face softening at the reunion.

Coolblow just calmed himself, whipped out his comb (which made his wife tense a second), then ran it through his hair (which then made her relax). "JJ and I will just…take it easy for a bit. No tourneys for a while…just making some more AMYs!"

Julia Jane wanted to sob with delight when she heard the reference regarding her daughter, to hint at possibly more children in the future. That dastardly Danson never showed such an interest…but she knew now that the Guile before her was the real thing, as he always shared her sentiment on this.

Abel thought to ask something along the lines of What about Charlie, but he thought better of it. The same question crossed Coolblow's mind as well at that moment, but he pushed it from his brain for once, thinking, _That whole deal can go kiss my assuredy-unsunglassed-ass for the time being. Time now to go home and be a family man myself._

In yet another corner of the vaunted verdant stark halls of Steelhull, an imposing, silvery figure flanked with sung-out shinobi and cyborg contemplated what his next move should be. He was still in shadow here; none of the Streeters or Tekkenites knew of his position as of yet. Seth banked that the best course of action would be to let the tourney play out; for certain, one of the heroic warriors would falter, would fail…and then it was just a matter of waiting in the wings, with his ancillary ninjas in tow, for the correct moment to strike and commandeer this ship.

But Seth wasn't counting on running smack into one of the most major snags he could have possibly have calculated in his infinitely arrogant mind.

The snag was almost six feet tall, and decked out in a dapper black trench coat with matching duds otherwise. He had a sharp face and sharper hairstyle to cap it. And though he put forth, per se, a very generic-seeming persona, he was most central to this portion of the entire Namco nation.

"You will come out of the shadows and release your Iron Fist captives at once," the young man ordered Seth. At this, the silvery monolith only snickered.

"Huh…you possess no inkling of who you are dealing with, boy. I have been born—incubated—to battle against creatures far, far more advanced than the piddling likes of you…"

"And the reaches of my own bloodline fan out dwarfingly further than your own, you synthetic sham." The young man shucked off his trench coat and flicked his spiky ass bangs Seth's way. "You must know now that you are confronting none other than…"

"JIN."

And then the unflappable, (if uninspired) young man turned to face a far greater threat than Seth could ever pose.

"JIN," continued the Mishima wayward's watchwoman, as the girl—Ling Xiaoyu—stepped fully into view, "you have no idea on how many…CONTINENTS now it's been that I've been worrying…preening…agonizing over your whereabouts. You have made me sick—to _death_—over the idea that you've gone and had something horrible happen. I mean…I saw that you weren't even on the list for this tourney—the second we all made the jump over from Namcoland, and you somehow get out of eyeshot from me!—if I were of your bloodline, I would impose seppuku on myself."

Jin wanted to blurt out, Well, don't the Chinese have a counterpart to that, anyway?! But he held his hand, as he knew the one with whom he was really in trouble with here, between the X-Woman and this silvery stranger.

"And _you,_" Xiaoyu continued, pointing out at Seth, "I've heard of your exploits with your own 'Ess Eye' whatever company. You don't stand a chance here; you may as well bow the eff out…"

_"I have a stake in all of this, and I will claim what is mine here!"_ boomed Seth sharply. "I have aces in the hole through the captivity of Yoshimitsu, Raven…and that clod cyborg as well. And Yoshi is my greatest hostage, as it's really a twofer—given that I have, even literally down in my center…?!"

And then Jin and Ling stared at Seth as the semblance of a man looked down to his stomach and noticed, for the first time and to his horror, that the Hunter Drone encasing the soul of Kunimitsu was now missing.

But her husk was lodged within me, just seconds before speaking to Spiky Spaz and his babysitter over here…

"I believe…you're looking for this?!"

And then Seth whirled around, finding himself confounded by a woman warrior twice in the same several minutes as he beheld the Hunter Drone's screen likeness herself, holding the very item in her hands which he had clutched in his guts.

"EEE-YIHHHHH!" Yoshimitsu exclaimed, from the suffocating shadows in which Seth trapped him, upon the sight of the Devil Cat over whom he fretted. In his native tongue, "You made me freak out like Loopy Ling over here, over you and crap! You pain in my mechanized ass…!"

"Enough Yoshi-san!" shouted Kunimitsu, in her tongue as well. "I appreciate your attention—it has nearly stolen…my heart, as I have stolen so much from you—but we must now focus on the fool who has exacerbated this entire situation." She then turned her fox-masked face in Seth's direction. "We will have you know that an even greater opponent will face you down, in the ensuing seconds."

"Dooonnnnnn't make me laugh," chided Seth, as he stretched his arms and legs in all sorts of weird contortions. "I already know about the idiot you're sending…I can take down that kangaroo craphead anyday."

The Tekkenites just looked at Seth with a mixture of mainly impassiveness, with a slight bit of quizzicality.

"I intercepted the message that came through…about 'ROGER' alighting here in the next few minutes and such."

Ling gaped at Seth for a few seconds more—then bust out into laughter. "AHHHAHAHAHAHA," she belted, "Ha. Seth, do you know one of the MAIN reasons that I need to watch over Jin?"

The Final Fourth Fighter Tournament Boss just gazed blankly at the girl.

"It's because he has trouble…communicating, sometimes. …He can't spell in English for shit! The message you got? It's not ROGER. It was supposed to be shorthand, with the first letter representing 'Our' and the last four spelling out another foe, typically of ours…but now of yours."

Seth had read up on all these jokers—but he wasn't prepared for this one, not at all. His silver paled a bit. "You…you mean…"

"That's right!" piped Kunimitsu, as she went over to help Yoshi and the other captives. "Your Target for tonight is none other than…"

"DAAARRROOO…"

Seth moved to evade, but the centurion whose flesh glowed the greatest of greens—far greater than even the walls of this final Bibbidy Bobbedy bastard of an arena—had already teleported in to strike down at the silver shinobi slavemaster, taking him down to the ground effortlessly.

"I never thought I'd say this," whispered Kuni to Yoshi, as the two stood by, "but…effing GO ON, OGRE! SHAKE HIS SHINY ASS ALL AROUND!"

And then the kooky kunoichi that was Kunimitsu dived away from her Manji man to join the fray herself.

"That's not FAIR!" shouted Seth, waving his arms weakly as he took a spinning chop to the chin—and then another and another and another and another and another, as Kuni continued to spin around and unload on the silvery synth, "how many of you are going to pile up on…"

But this was cut off by Xiaoyu's grabbing one of Seth's weakass arms and seamlessly executing a wrist throw on the moronic monolith. Once the Fourth Tournament Fuck reached his feet again, he was met with a double-fisted electric punch pair by the jammin' Jin himself.

He had to get away (obviously). Seth 'ported as fast as his totalitarian technology would allow, the creep reappearing in a corner not far away from where he fled. "I will have to do this methodically against you mob," he said.

And then Kunimitsu came in, and jumped up and disappeared, and struck in with her kunai just like another, Capcomian kunoichi…and then she attempted to run rings around the monster in an attempt to dizzy him and have the boss fall over…

…but Seth just sucked the girl in close with his centripetal yin-yang center—the item usually serving as his virtual navel anyway—and he grabbed at the girl, teleported again, and then threw her down where he reemerged.

"Kuni, NO!" shouted Yoshimitsu passionately. He was too demoralized and soul-sucked to act, though, as were Raven and Bryan—all the choir work they had to perpetrate over these "planets" had drained them so.

"Don't worry, cyberskeleton," said Seth in a soothing kind of sarcasm. "Her soul's still intact.

"It's just the BODY," he continued, standing over her unconscious, shallowly-breathing form, "that's going to…"

And then Seth was once more cut off by an interloping Jin, who grabbed the enemy entity by the head with his foot, then slapped the Sethster across the face back and forth with it. After the boss fell and quickly ported back to his feet, Jin slid up fast, forced Seth's hand behind his back, and threw the monster over his shoulder.

…But then, as Jin reared back, something glowing in his eyes, perhaps to give in to a more devious, devilish side of him…

…Seth moved in with a drastic spin kick, knocking the Zaibatsu zinger aside—then laid into the young man with about a trillion more hits, almost seemingly from a telekinetic source as Jin then hit the ground, the last twenty or so strikes appearing to have emanated from the open air.

He then teleported again, leaving his sitter to sigh over him.

Indeed, Ling looked down, at the chumped-out charge now crumpled at her feet…

And sighed...but it was more one of aggravation. "You know, God damn it, Jin…I look after you, and I pack your lunch, and I wipe your ASS, and you RUN OUT on me…that's it. I'm just done…I'm just fucking done.

"You HEAR ME?!" she shouted, directing this more at Seth now. "I've had it with you sturdy imposing poser punkasses!" Xiaoyu pulled off a spin kick at the waist, then one at the ankle level, then an axe kick back at waist level to floor Seth before he could even begin to defend himself. She even managed to get a power elbow thrust against the monster's chest before he grabbed her with one hand and held her in midair.

"I'm DONE…with Joke Jackoff Kazama…with all you Street Fuckers…with EVERYTHING!" She managed to get this out just before Seth threw the young woman with one hand across the arena. Ling landed hard against the opposite wall…then, after a couple of suitable seconds, she got herself up, started towards Jin, and sniffed in the direction of Seth.

"I'm not gonna even bother…I just don't give anymore."

She then hefted young Kazama onto her shoulder just so that he wouldn't receive any more damage in the wake of the inevitable asskicking that Seth was about to receive at the hands of his last opponent. "Oh, and by the way," she put in, "you beat Kuni, and Jin, and me technically…but we were never on the card.

"If ANYONE was on it…well, he's still in it!"

And Seth turned one more time—as now he could no longer teleport, from all the wearing down he received at the hands of these interlopers—and he met the spinning shield strike of Ogre almost with welcoming arms, as fatigued as he was now. The whimsical warlord from Ess Eye Enn never thought he would face so much simultaneous opposition—and the Tekkeners were made of tougher stuff than he had underestimated back on his plush perch in Colomb…er, Soilmound.

Seth didn't even fight back as Ogre now lifted the milquetoast monolith up into the air, and…

"DAAARRROOO!"

…most authoritatively jettisoned the jerk back to the jade floor, Seth embracing oblivion more eagerly than ever.

Still hovering in midair, Ogre looked around at the other Teksmen and did not query, did not wonder at all. Giving them a gesture of peace for once, he nodded, then shot up towards the ceiling and was gone seemingly as soon as he had arrived.

In one last, large area of the lime labyrinth at the heart of Steelhull—in the very bowels of this core complex—a short, stubby, sort-of-Jack-Nicholson-faced scientific jerk made all the necessary preparations for his next transformation.

"I have forgiven Ken—the Ken I have known all this time—for the transgression of my defeat, all these years ago," he said, as he flipped a final few more switches in anticipation for his change once more. "After all, because he has helped me since, in bringing me back to life, and finally joining up with me…cocky little crewcut Ken has more than redeemed himself in my ratfink little eyes.

"Soon it will be time for the world to behold my greatest work—my most dangerous, cancerous manifestation…"

A few stories above, while this devilish doctor awaited the oncoming champion of this tournament—undoubtedly one of the Fighters or Tekkenites made it through, given all the hubbub around here, and undoubtedly he would be another skinny rip like the crewcutted Ken, whom the scientist would be overly excited and ready to strangle with his transformed figure's huge, haunting hands—there was not one, but many combatants who were percolating in preparation for the next portion of the peridot passageways that was this final, sprawling arena.

"I told you, Edmond!" screamed the pompous, basically literal redskin Turk, as he helped himself to another slathering of oil for the first time in thirty seconds already, "I…_I_ should be the one who dives down and destroys that demon!"

"No, Hakan. It doesn't just have to be one of us. You've seen and heard of all the other battles—we can make this a team effort, as has been all the other fights so far."

"But I still need to prove myself! I only came out in the Super Version of the Fourth Tournament, and I haven't had much exposure to…"

"The REDDDDD Cyclone has had enough of this REDDDDD PSYCHO…and sycophant."

Hakan whirled around to face the Russian asspain who had been heckling him all this time. "Zangief," he started, helping himself to another football Gatorade Shower of an olive-oil dousing, "you have no place in coming between Edmond and I. The two of us have had a…history together, a history of wrestling which you could not begin to fathom…"

"Your bawdy blue lego hair is a mite bit brown from having had your head up your Turkish tush for so long, Hakan!" Zangief flexed about five or six times before continuing on. "Honda and I have been the original prankster wrestlers since time immemorial! If it comes to it, I will have to _show_ you, firsthand, how this has been established!"

"Go ahead!" Hakan then tensed into his fighting stance. "I could certainly use the practice!"

Before Zangief could even react, the titian-skinned Turkish terror slid across the forest-hued floor and tripped up the Cyclone. Turning abruptly, Hakan then leapt and body splashed on top of Zangief.

"(Huh, huh,) Honda!" Hakan cried, "it's the little eggshape-hunched-down formation wrestlers like you and me—not these bonerifically tall, meaty types—that are the true grapplers! Sumo and Turkish—those are where it's aGHHH!"

Hakan's haughty rhetoric was cut short by a powerful human missile head butt courtesy of Honda himself, which knocked the wind out of his Turkish target and sent him down. Hakan defensively flopped around on the floor, attempting all he could to get away from what now were apparently both his enemies.

This didn't stop Zangief from lunging in with a jumping headbutt that took Hakan back down to the ground once he gained his feet. Honda reinforced the matter with a few hundred hand slaps to the massive merciless Ming face (sort of) of the Turkish tough.

Slowed down somewhat by the beefy bitch slaps, Hakan gathered what was left of his strength. "I see…I see the lesson you are teaching me, you guys…about how teamwork is critical to our success!

This disarmed Zangief and Honda for JUST long enough…

"But please!" the Turk said, pulling Edmond in abruptly, then grappling around and throwing him over his head, "allow me to put in my two, and some more cents, for you all to come to your OWN sense!"

Zangief cursed at this, in part because the Eastern Orthodox enormous oaf had such a horrible sense of humor, or at least of phrasing. Zang thus went in with his spinning hammer fist that almost took Hakan's head right off. As the oily enemy went down yet again, Honda drove the point on home with a flying assbomb splash that dwarfed Hakan's own body dive in altitude and attitude.

"(Huh, huh, huh)," panted Hakan as he felt himself slipping in and out of consciousness. "Okay, okay…ngh!"

As he stood near Zangief, he tried to pull off one last move—a charged-up headbutt, to take the Russkie down right—but the Soviet Segismundo was all too ready, picking Hakan up of the ground preemptively, holding him high, and then throwing him back down again. He followed up with a kneeling uppercut for emphasis, once Hakan stood up a last time…then he wound up his electrified glove and even got a third of the way into the swing...

"NO, Zangief."

The red Russian spun to face Honda.

"He's covered in oil. You know? Of course, like, Hakan's been in the tournament with all these fireball-wielders—but were they to make him go up in it, at least they'd be at a safe distance and such. Not so with you, at such a close range."

And so Zangief relented, putting his heavy hand down.

"What we need to do is launch an incredible attack," suggested Honda, huddled with the other two, "one which our foe would not foresee."

"He is a fucking mountain of flesh, is he not?!" grunted Hakan. "We need to make a hell of an entrance, start in strong!"

"Yes," said Zangief, "according to Chun Li's Interpol records, our enemy is a mountain of a man—literally—with giant, strangling hands. It is not really a creature to wrestle, so much as strike with the strongest blows we have."

Honda stared at the Russian rassler for a long moment. When Zangief's eyes found his own, Edmond: "Zang…Zangief…I know about your life's dream. I know about what you have always wanted to do, and how it has eluded you all this time.

"I know that for all of your existence, since you were a small child, you have wanted to do no less than spinning-piledrive a Mercedes-Ben…er, 'SF Car,' as they call it nowadays.

"I cannot promise that you will ever have that glorious bonus round. I cannot promise that you will ever be given an opportunity to piledrive what is basically a Benz…

"But I can, now, give you a chance to piledrive a Honda, at least."

And with that, Edmond cast his head down, willingly offering his body to Zangief for that ever-powerful signature move, to be perpetrated down into the depths of this verdant deathtrap of an arena.

As Zangief nodded, stood over the side of the precipice leading to the synthetic chasm at the bottom of which their enemy awaited, and began to hug Honda's head between his ginormous gams, a slight whimper of desire, angst, and envy escaped the throat of Hakan—despite the fact that the latter was married inexplicably to a gorgeous, busty blonde with whom he had a litter of little legohead kids. The Russian railed his head over to the redskin Turk.

He then motioned with said head over one shoulder.

"Come on…just get on."

Below, in a small cubbyhole above an unactivated trapdoor—and between the three Fighter wrestlers and the mountain of a man monster who anticipated them—two ursine assholes pawed at one another, each with his or her own passionate desire in mind.

One to get in…the other to get the hell out.

"RHHHOOOAAA! (Translation: Pleaaasse, Panda! Just this once, give me what I want…what I've been craving for!")

"RHAAA…RHHHOOOAAA! (Translation: Damn it, Kumquat! Get the hell away from me! We're not going to get it on! For the last time! Especially not here!)

She swung with the one remaining tangerine bracelet that she still had, striking Kuma right on the nose. Panda looked at her other, unbraceleted wrist a second, then craned her head askance for a second, thinking, Damn you, Xiaoyu, and that fucking Kickstarter…with its prizes…

She turned back just in time to see Kuma come in with a crushing bear hug that gummed her hard up against him. "RHHHOOOAAA! (Translation: If I can't get what I want…I'll just have to TAKE it from you! My love!)

"RHHHOOOAAA! (Translation: "If it's what you want, Kumdum…")

And with that, Panda leaned in and bit Kuma hard on the chest, causing the brown bear to relent considerably. She then moved in with a hugging slap that banged hard against the loverbear's head, making it ring for a while to come. "RHAAA…RHHHOOOAAA! (Translation: "Sorry…I like it rough…'my love.'")

"RHHHOOOAAA! (Translation: "I'll show you how rough it can get!")

Kuma slapped Panda up, then down, then up again, knocking her off balance. He then put his hands on the floor and kicked like a mule so that the other bear shot straight up into the fetid air of the forest-hued area.

By the time she came back down, both bears were beaten up badly. They went in and hugged one another, the way boxers did…and here there was no referee, no one otherwise to break them up.

Below, the evil scientist began to fuse into his final form, his shoulders expanding out and his torso tearing to become one with the wall behind him. In another few seconds, what was once Doctor Troy was now a destroying entity known only to himself and his closest compatriots, for now anyway, as…

"THE MAGENTA MOUNTAIN MAJESTY!"

"It's a dumb name, Troy."

"SUCK IT, BUZZCUT." The magenta monolith breathed in and out slowly, and shook the floor as it exhaled. "I WILL CLAIM THE WIN FOR OUR SIDE AT LAST. I WILL CHOKE THE LIFE OUT OF THE INCOMING FIGHTER WITH THESE STRANGLING HANDS…AS I SHOULD HAVE DONE YEARS AGO WITH…NEVERMIND."

"With who?"

"NOTHING."

"Were you gonna say me?"

"N…NO, I JUST…"

"Well, once they get through with you," said the sleek Ken, as he adjusted the settings on his silver suit, "they're gonna face me, for the championship round. And I can't wait for my final fight!"

"Oh God," cried a female voice from some distance behind. She had wished for more than to be just a front for these fools. "Capcom put that on the back of your box, way back when."

"What was that, Stock?"

"Nothing."

"Yeah, right…nothing." This Ken bwamaed out some cyboplasmic blows, into the open air, in anticipation. "You just keep your hands over three-quarters of your face—but over a hundred percent of your mouth, okay?"

Above—way above, in the control rooms where a number of antsy announcers altercated—an infinitely jittier Ling Xiaoyu paced back and forth. She was so restless, especially now that she was done with Jin for good. She felt not unlike Inigo Montoya towards the end of Princess Bride when he finally got revenge for his father; what was there to do now?

She looked down at the wrestlers and other bears in the synthetic chasm below. Oh, look—there was Panda, punching and biting away at Kuma, who was chopping and kicking in return…she could give a lesser fuck as of now anymore.

Really. Time to live for herself.

"Ling!" shouted Chun Li as she stormed the control room. "Look at Zangy and the other guys—they're moving into a special spinning piledriver formation!"

Ling duly looked out at the rasslers once more as she noticed the Russian with the sumo wrestler's head between his legs and the Turk piggybacking the Cyclone. They were all tensed to leap over the side, into the plunge and the final boss chamber.

But the bears were still in the way, their forms crowding the trapdoor! Everyone would be most unsatisfyingly smushed!

"Eh," said Xiaoyu, completely uninterested at present. She lackadaisically punched a large, circular red button at the panel at which she was sitting.

[PUNCH]

"Fuck 'em."

[WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE]

"RHAAAAAAAAAA [Panda Translation: SHHHIIIIIIIIIII…"]

"RHOOOAAAAAAAAAA [Kuma Translation: FUUUUUUUUUUU…"]

The two ursine interlopers Fist-Five-Dark-Resurrection-Endingly shot down the chute just as Zangief and company incidentally went right into their own leap, the latter group not even aware of the bears below.

The Magenta Majesty craned its purple peepers up just in time, its hands tensing into claws as Kuma crushed down on the cybo king's left hand, Panda plopped down onto the enemy's right, both bears ripping each respective extremity irretrievably off the opponent's body.

"AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!" the giant grape entity ejaculated in agony.

But just as the Majesty was still looking to each of his besplashed hands, lying on the cold, green ground…

"NNNNNNNNNNGGGGGHHHHH!"

[BOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMM]

…The incoming spinning piledriver, backed by the power and avoirdupois of three Streeter wrestlers, punched straight through the enemy's insides and reduced the titan-Troy mountain to a totaled, plasm molehill.

Across the way, the chestnut/russet/umber woman tensed, still holding her hands over her face, but now much more waveringly. She started even more when a baby-blue-clad Chinese cop alighted from above, landing gracefully just before her.

"So…" Chuns started, as her gaze pierced through the palms of her enemy. "It's you at last."

Said enemy kept her hands on her face, in that same right palm over right side and left palm over bottom half formation. "I admire that you made it this f…"

"Spare the speech. We hear it from every fighting game last guy. …Actually, from every last guy in games ever."

The other woman paused. Then: "You're probably still in the dark about my identity…"

"I've pieced together who you are, after all this time. Ess Aitch Eye Tee, the tourney, the whole thing. You don't really stand for Holistic Integral anything, do you?"

"Strategic Hegemonic Interplanetary Terrorism is where it's at, my lady." The Russet one stood there solidly, as the Russian and the bears and all else were writhing on the floor, alive and okay officially but just out of it, out of the running for now. "And now you have a chance to join us…"

"No. NO WAY. I'm taking you all in. I know that you're not alone in this…"

But the other lady would not relent. "Join me, Chun Li, and I will make YOUR FACE…"

"NO! …NOT A FUCKING CD-I REFERENCE! YAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAPY AP!"

I mean, really. This author was totally with the Chunner on this one.

The Dalian detective kicked away with her lightning leg, the spasming feet striking out and whipping the hands finally off the other woman's face. What remained was the beautiful features looming over the sumptuous russet dress, the face wreathed by the chestnut tresses, now at last both the umber eyes exposed and everything, of…

"Stockardde Strakerstriker. I had a hunch it was you all along."

"But you couldn't be sure…not until all was uncovered."

Chun Li bit back on her rage as her enemy said this. The strongest woman in the world knew that the other woman was so correct about that.

"So now you know, Chunny, that it will be ME who will be the victor of this contest! It will be ME, STOCKARDDE AND NO OTHER, WHO WILL BE CROWNED THE QUEEN OF THE PRINCE OF THE WHOREVERINE, THE WHOREVERINE, AND THE WHOREVERINE TOURNAMENT!"

The Street Fighter shook her head and shrugged. "That one, overexposed Marvel property really just…shunted out the other two in the original Tournament title here, didn't it?"

"Yeah…and we're all gonna go see the movie this summer…and we're all gonna automatically adore it."

Stockardde then squeezed her hands tightly, looked up above her, waiting for the obligatory rooster-helmeted laser armor to come plunging on down.

Nothing.

"Wh…wha?"

"Oh, yeah," said Chun Li flatly, as she settled into her fighting stance. "Namco's resident ninjette kinda…went and nabbed the suit you were gonna use for this fight."

"Kunim…that's so NOT FAIR!"

"Neither is a tournament leg in which it's sudden death if one fighter on just one side falls, while the other side can keep having people eliminated, honey."

"I…I just…oh, for the days when I could tell some silver-suited shithead to pound away at aliens and get the plasm and then the portal would open automatically!"

Without warning, Stockardde just dove in and grabbed at the other woman's forearm. The Russet One chomped in, biting down on Chun Li's wrist.

"OH! No you didn't…"

Then the Chunned one abruptly grabbed Stockardde and executed her symptomatic shove throw, pushing the opponent roughly to the ground. As her enemy lay writhing a second, Chun followed up with a sliding-in double-leg sweep kick that kept her target down a bit more.

The detective then dialed in on her on-board computer, trying to get ahold of Ling for another, special entrant. But the other Pinyin pugilist wasn't in work mode at the moment, the girl daydreaming of everything she could do now that Tekken would be tucked into her past…

"Damn it," said Chun Li…then she shouted a bit as suddenly she felt a hard fist slam into her foot. "Get the hell OFF!"

Stockardde followed up with a scratch to Chun Li's shin, and that was the end for her.

The Chunster abruptly flipped over, propped up, and launched into her reverse helicopter, which knocked the Stock this way and that and finally once more to the ground. Now meters away from her enemy on the right side of the arena, Chun Li threw out one of her own cyboplasmically-enhanced fireballs, characteristically thrusting out her rear as she did so.

After this struck Stockardde in the arms which tried to protect her face—she just one more time trying to obscure those gorgeous features, the woman began to billow to the ground fully, hazarding one last look at her triumphant foe.

"Nice…ass…when you do that," she managed to get out.

"No," said the detective as she paced to her prey, "you don't get off that easy. Get up. GET UP." Huffily the Chunny-Chun-Chun forced Stockardde to her feet, and then she pointed to the opposite wall.

"What," was all the Russet lady could get out at this juncture.

"There's one more combatant on our…card…scheduled to fight."

"No…"

"Don't worry. It's only another lady.

"The Namcoers call her…

"…NANCY."

Bursting, blasting through the far partition came NANCY-EM990K, the thing soaring forward as Chun Li retreated behind it. Stockardde stood no chance—literally even, as she fell back to the ground in fright, while the metallic monster loomed over and pummeled her with its rocket propelled fists, its gatling punches, and its crushing stomps all around.

What was left of the woman who terrorized the Tekkenites and the Streeters all this time resembled a liquid stain the color of chestnut, russet, and umber—but mushy…

…just like the preserves she was purported to be, that while back.

While the gigantic mech moved back a bit, settling into a simmer, the central compartment stuttered a second, then opened up. As an astute Tekken fan could tell, this model of NANCY was not the standard MI847J one which cropped up here and there in the Sixth Iron Fist.

No—this was a special one, made specially for a forlorn blonde babe who went by the surname of Masters.

"K…Ken…"

Gathering all of her courage as she leapt to the ground, she stood stock straight and screamed at the still-intact other side wall.

"KEN! I KNOW YOU'RE BEHIND THERE!

"SHOW YOURSELF…NOW!"

That opposite great, green wall then suddenly ticked away—just as the small doors would tick away and open up for a certain buzzcutted bastard in this final stage in 2010—but here, again, it was the entire sidewall as who came forth but TWO blond men by the name of Ken.

The Crewcut…

…and the Cavedweller—the latter propped up supine on a table.

"KEN…"

Eliza couldn't contain herself as she began to walk shakily to the red-gied Neanderthal-maned man who she always knew was her real spouse. Even more certain than was Julia Jane about her faux beau, Eliza had the conviction that somewhere, in this Capcom universe, her Ken was out there.

And now there he was, alongside that…pale imitation.

An imitation which now threateningly fired a right hook cyboloogie just past her head.

"Don't come any closer," said the Buzzcut, his fists primed with cybo. "You neither, Chun Li…everyone stay the hell back. I…I can explain.

"Years ago…what was it, 1989…this Ken you see here, on the table…he had fighting dreams. He had dreams of conquering the Circuits. But he had some other, creative dreams as well.

"In those heady late eighties, there was an actor, nay…a master thespian who, not unlike myself, had taken on the Frontier. Unlike my superalien, Final Fight Frontier, though, his was just the regular, unleaded Final Frontier. He boldly went…well, you know.

"Then, when he felt that his spacefaring years were behind him, he set down to invent the adventures, rather than embark on them himself. He came up with a tome which neither I, nor your Ken, will never forget…TekWar."

Eliza stared at this fake Ken in abject, unspeaking shock as the latter went on.

"And the Ken you knew and loved…while he went from tacky twin-engine plane to tacky twin-engine plane to each fighting destination in the First Tourney, he devoured that novel, again and again.

"It became his favorite book. In time, he decided that he, too, wanted to become like his hero. He, too, wanted to embrace the age of space travel and exploration.

"He decided that he would become the man he always really wanted, deep down, to be. Your man, inspired by his dramatic and literary hero, was to become…TEK=KEN.

"With an 'equals' between the syllables…kind of like 'Death Equals Adder.'"

"What?"

"Nevermind. Anyway, your Ken worked so hard as his ultimate dream that it split him, quite literally, in two. The cyboplasm on which he and Troy had been working for so long, it literally gave him an extra life. Enter my own ass at this juncture."

"So you…you essentially became the Ken that…my Ken always wanted to be."

"That's right. And of course, by the way, the whole alias of Tek=ken sort of led to a whole foofaraw and all with the Zaibatsu…even though _I_ have always been—as people like Blanka would say—the 'Original Gangsta Coolblow Tekken,' so to speak, as I came first and all."

"As your man knew, though, that this manifestation—this TEK=KEN—would be inimical not only to his fighting spirit on Earth, but also to your loving marriage, he regarded me as evil from the outset. I was basically Evil Ken, Eliza…contracted to…"

"Kevin," Ken's wife interpolated, "Kevin Strakerstriker. But why the convoluted last name?"

"Ah, it was just an alias. Also, you know, Airplane was always Ken's favorite comedy…and as you know, I'm sure, of your husband's tendency to go on and on about martial arts philosophies, just as Ted Striker did, to bore people literally to death…"

And for sure, Eliza felt this herself right now, what with Crewcut's continuing on and on at the moment. Again, a chapter previous and concurrent to the events just this instant, certain codgers could actually overhear this entire explanation through the walls…and they, too, at least attempted a commission of suicide just as some of those passengers did on that ill-fated flight in the legendary Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker film.

"But I must be boring you as well now, Eliza."

"No…not at all."

Kevin's head perked up, not exactly enjoying the sound of the voice of the other Ken's wife.

"In fact…things are about to get even a bit more interesting." The woman crossed her arms over her chest. "You know…you're all about energies…and fluids…and dramatic effects. I have some secrets to divulge right now as well, Kevvy. I know, you see, about all those Ewoks you were running around with in Frisco, just like a kinky Tiger Woods (as redundant as that might be)…but you might not know about how they cause pain to some people, a very special, sexually-trasmitting kind of pain…just like they've been causing pain in you."

Tek=ken panned his gaze down at his torso and hips. "What do you mean," he said, shakily of a sudden. "I'm infected?!"

"Didn't you know that you were their most frequent victim?

"Oh…of course you wouldn't…since the cyboroofies I slipped gave them had erased those moments from your mind."

Kevin squirmed as he never did before. "But…why, Eliza?!"

The woman shifted haughtily as she stood. Then the shackles holding Cave Ken down shattered, causing Buzzcut to bluster.

"I couldn't control the marriage if I only used your discoveries for good," the woman explained, with a weird, ominous warmth. "I had to become…

"…Evil Eliza, if you will. …It's a good a name as Evil Ryu…or friggin' Evil Ken contracted to Kevin and all."

Kevin couldn't focus on the woman across the way now, though, as he found himself facing down the crushing caveman that was the original gangsta Ken.

The latter torqued his arms in a preparing stretch. "I'm ready for ya," he said, generically but somehow inspiringly. "Bring it on!"

Tek=ken said nothing, but simply kicked out, pulling off his you-press-down-to-shoot-up kick, which Ken readily dodged. The real fighter then answered with an axe kick that took the silvery sham to the ground like no superalien ever could. Kevin then righted himself, and attempted to fire off the uppercut he would do after a number of other punches—but again Ken was too fast, and he launched into his right-left swirl kick upright helicopter that struck the Strakerstriker here and there and took him down once more.

The much more minor 2010er leapt out again, into a safe distance. He flipped over Ken and tried to fire down at him, but Ken rolled away. He flipped in and attempted a short-ranged flurry of cyboloogies, but again no purchase.

Exasperated, Kevin landed right next to Eliza. He then made to lunge at the woman, but she too was terribly fast, ducking out of the way and first grabbing at the man's ear, then shunting her head away again from a reactive lunge from Kevin and pushing at his face, then reaching in before Kevin could react again and boxing him on the side of the head, dislodging the shades from his face.

All Eliza saw were white-irised eyes, as she had surmised as such—no Mutant Cyclopean cyboloogies optically emanating forth at all.

"Yep, it's just like everyone else says around here," she mused, "the only X-presence really existent here is the effing Whoreverine."

Kevin pushed past the lady and faced down the redder, now enraged Ken. "We're going to end this, this final of fights, NOW. Just as you would always say, and your brokeback budokan buddy Ryu as well…

"ADORRRRREEE—SHIT!"

And with that—and thinking after that last spoken syllable of the organization of the same, scatological moniker, and how his exclamation was a sort of subliminal Heil-Hitler to his beloved company baby, Tek=ken let loose with another, longer-ranged cybo salvo…but Ken evaded once more as he sidestepped.

"No, no, no," chastised Ken as he set his feet in, and drew his hands back. "The word you're so stridently seeking is…

"HADOOOUUUKENNN!"

And then the projectile that ensued forth—laced with no cyboplasmic influence whatever, just one hundred ten percent pure Ken Masters—floated forward furiously and rocked the false fighter off his feet.

Kevin didn't rise slowly into the air and explode, as he might have in 2010—no, here he just fluttered feebly to the floor as Eliza rushed to her real husband.

"Ken!...Ken, oh, how I…how I missed you…"

"Eliza…baby, I'm so sorry about all this."

They embraced for several minutes, just holding each other and soaking in the moment.

Then Eliza again, finally, and looking her man lovingly in the eye:

"Shatner's written sequels to his first book, you know.

"Stay the hell away from them."

"Will do, honey. Again, I'm sorr…"

[KRENNNGGG]

The two beautiful blond(e)s that were the real Ken and his wife craned their heads up of a sudden.

"WHY CAN'T ANYONE WAIT FOR THE IMPACT SOUND BEFORE STARTING TO FIGHT. ME DAMN IT!"

Then what sounded like an Act of the Sixth Fist Announcer started forth, as a fierce, harsh rumbling shook the vermilion vault.

"We'd better beat on out of here, Lize!" shouted Ken as he nodded absently to this strange lady he had never met—a Chinese woman with the puffy ribbons in her hair—for them all to get going.

EPILOGUE: A LITTLE SPARKED GROUND

The phone was ringing off the hook all afternoon, it seemed, and Mayor Michael Haggar was up to his neck in everything from praise to disparagement regarding the way in which he handled the whole Galactus invasion matter.

It was, in all honesty, nothing that a three-foot-long measure of piping couldn't handle—the implement was really equipped to be able to take out all varieties of intergalactic warlords.

Hell, if it came to it, Hags would have knocked that Strakerstriker guy and his whole superalien crew out of the park—out of the planet, matter of fact. Mayor Mike was just giving the Streeters and those Tekkenite teabaggees a crack at it first.

"Dad, was it scary at all? Up in space?"

"Huh? Oh, naw, Jess." He turned to his gorgeous golden-blonde daughter, who was just coming back from her study abroad. She managed to learn all about architecture over in Australia—where she was safe from superaliens, as there was no tourney leg there—but she still had to be careful, for while the voluptuous vavavoom that was Jessica was getting all she could out of studying abroad, everyone was around her was doing the same…except that for them, there was a space in the word "abroad" between the first and second letters, regarding their lascivious attentions towards her.

"All it was was a nice romp up in the ether, and a chance to give my new pipe a good breaking in. To tell the truth, fighting that Galactic Guy wasn't much different from repeatedly jumping up and touching a rim on a basketball net, given his height—kind of like how NES _Punch Out_'s like that too, and not like real boxing."

"Oh."

[RRRRRINNNG]

"Hold on a second.

"Hello?"

"Hag."

"Oh…hey there, Maki." The Mayor's brow furrowed a second; the girl on the other end sounded a bit distraught. This was bothersome to him, as Miss Genryusai, with her blonde magnificence as well, stood as the sublimation of all the repressed desires that Haggar subconsciously had for his own daughter. (No one was immune to Jessica's charms).

"Hag…we've got a situation downtown." Maki then covered the receiver of the Metro City payphone a second, to look to see how much worse it was starting to get.

About twenty minutes prior, all the Street Fighters and Tekkeners convocated in the city's park to celebrate their collective victory over the superaliens. In tow were Kevin, now as only the man who would be Ken; Troy, who was now melted down from his Majesty form; and actually Stockardde, whom they managed to put back together with some cyboplasmic implants, to restore basically ninety-six percent of her body.

"Streeters…Tekkenites…Warriors all," began the official, original gangsta Coolblow Guile, speaking with authority through a megaphone in one hand—and of course combing his hair steadily with his other, "we are all to celebrate, and be celebrated, as we have not only survived…but THRIVED…in the Prince of the The Whoreverine Times Three Tournament!"

Riotous applause from the Namco number and Capcom contingency present. The real, Cave Ken embraced Eliza tightly, Julia Jane looked up admiringly at her man, and Panda shoved a paw in Kuma's face when he tried to imitate the Masters Caveman just now.

"But I am certain that it is the case, that for many of you, our victory by itself is not enough. No…what we require, especially for the sake of those who were more than victimized in this entire conflict," and at this Guile looked to Ken, and even wanted to point to himself as well—but he didn't want to blow his own horn, "is a certain meting out of justice. It must be justice, to be doled upon the perpetrators of the crime against Earth that was this tourney in the first place."

Hmphs of approbation crossed the crowd. Some, like Chun Li, stamped her foot in disapproval, not wishing for this whole thing to reach Shirley Jackson levels of mob madness; others such as Ling Xiaoyu were whistling with both fingers firmly inserted in mouth, and hollering "FUCK YEAHHHHHH! FRY 'EM UP!"

And it was at that point that the three main criminals were led out—wheeled out, really—into the main green of the park. Each was contained within a giant, circuslike human cannon, glistening and glowing the whitish-blue color of cyboplasm.

"We are going to be swift, and decisive, in our doling of justice," Guile had gone on, "and we will visit upon these individuals a punishment most fitting—especially for those of you who didn't really prefer their flying arrangements, from leg to leg of the contest."

Again, a variety of reactions in the audience, with sarcastic, indignant guffaws from the high-class Dudley to the lowlife Damnd, while others such as Lili and Dan looked lovingly in each others' eyes. After all, if it weren't for that sixty-thousand-mile-an-hour impact, they might never have officially made each other's fateful acquaintance…

"As such…we're going to impose a certain…capital punishment…of sorts. …Or really," backpedaled Guile, as he realized how awful that sounded, "we're going to leave it up to outer space itself, from which our little interlopers arrived, to decide the fates of these fakes."

An uproar of cheering and ovation once more, as Guile shouted one more time. "SO LET'S CALL IT…ARE YOU MAN, WOMAN, OR CHILD ENOUGH TO LIGHT IT UP WITH ME?!"

The hardy soldier then strolled over to Dhalsim, Crimson Viper, and Ogre, who all were hanging by and more than ready to do the honors. As each wielded a pure, lethal flame, they were each overly qualified to light the fuse of the one near to whom he or she stood.

As the Viper lit Stockardde's fuse with an unnecessary burst time effect, almost exploding the Russet one's cannon all at once; as Ogre fired a flamelet delicately to get Troy's cannon going; and as Dhals yoga-flamed into Kevin's fuse as well…a once-overly-imposing Shadaloo figure stalked the shadows for several minutes…then decided to have a secretly-stashed cybo snack. His mood was as animated as a terrible nineties streetfighting cartoon.

"Street...Fi...Fighters," he was mumbling, swaying into incoherence in a basically-inebriated haze. The plasm was clearly plunging the poor bastard well under the influence. "Street...Fighters...Fig-Turds...

"Haha...

"Hahahahaha...

"HahahahahahaHAAAAAhahahahaha …"

It was then Balrog who barged in on the man accidentally.

"This is deLIC…" started the psycho-crushing dictator as the boxer burst onto his part of the park scene—then Bison, upon seeing his aggressive underling, did all he could to wipe his mouth and cover up what he was hiding.

"Boss man!" cried Balrog, "what're you doing?"

"Ohhhhh…just, umm…helping myself to a little extra…cyboost…before it all gets outlawed, you know."

The boorish underboss looked at his gloves dumbly a second. He then pulled out a small packet and held it out in front of him. "Guess you won't be needing some of your Shadaloo Shindip—the snack mix you patented for all sorts of hostile world takeover parties—if you're into what you're eating there."

"Ohh, it be tasty," said Bison, in spite of his furtiveness a second ago, "you should really try some yourself!"

"You want us to get on going in a minute, then, boss?"

Then came the line you were waiting for. (Well, one of them, anyway). "Don't be hasty.

"Not until those Straker…strikers are…propelled into space dust!"

He then kind of Castro-District-ly sang the next line, as Bison whipped out what looked like a Viewmaster which would have come out a few years before the First Streeter Tournament.

"Which should be any moment now…"

On the screen was the flustered face of the ex-Ken known as Kevin as he struggled against his in-cannon bonds in vain. Bison smiled widely as he raised his hand, for the background music muted cornet contingency—again, Yoshimitsu, Bryan Fury, and Raven, as they were really starting to get into this ensemble thing—and they began to cock their trumpets in time.

What the evil overlord did not know, along with everyone else there, was that the Shadaloo showman was a sloppier eater than a bastardly bad guy should be. A good portion of the cyboplasm that he was scarfing down had spilled into the street—and it was starting to seep, considerably, into the road, the gutters, the sewers…the asphalt itself began to pulsate.

In the park proper, the fuses were ninety percent burned down, and the Targets were about to be taken terrifically into and beyond the Exosphere.

But then, just as Bison's cornets drew up their notes to get to their climactic finish, with their orchestral conductor and evil orchestrator generally crying, "I'M GOING TO CRY OUT MORE MAGFNICENTLY THAN I HEARD THAT POISON DID IN THE DANISH ICE RINK!"

"YYYYYE…"

[BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM]

[CRRRRRASSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH]

[GUMMAGUMMAGUMMAGUMMAGUMMAGUM MAGUMMAGUMMAGUMMACRASHSHCRAS H]

Everything happened, horribly, at once.

First, because of the ensuing explosions and violence, two of the three cybocannons—the ones on either side of Kevin—fell to one side and the other, respectively, firing out Troy and Stockardde so that they were blown away to somewhere in the Atlantic

and Pacific Oceans, respectively. Ah well, at least they still wouldn't be in range to harm anyone now.

What struck everyone's attention next was the ensuing horror that rose up from underneath them. It surrounded all of the Capcommers and Namcoers now, and there seemed to be no escape.

And all because Bison, in his binge that rivaled that of people who consumed the sweet Stuff of a parasitic dessert in a cult classic 1980s film, had unleashed another breed of eighties horror—of the Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground type—yet here the enemy was not from under the streets…

…but the freaking streets themselves.

"WHADDA WE DO, JUNYEH?!" screamed Roxy as she began handspringing away from a wave of asphalt looping towards her. The younger Andore couldn't respond, as he was too busy huffing and huffing to keep up.

"Guess we just hafta live up to our names…LITERALLY!" answered El Fuerte as he did his frantic, frenetic arena run all around the boulevards that barreled after him.

Some of the manifestations actually formed into humanoid entities as well, and these pursued the stronger, beefier brawlers, while the thinner ones were just fleetingly ferreted out by undulations of avenues.

Twenty minutes later, with Maki on the phone: "Jesus, Hag! HELP! WE'RE BEING ATTACKED BY STREET PEOPLE!"

The mayor turned in his seat to his best, breasty baby girl. "You know, it's like, damn it, I think I've cleaned up around here—like, everywhere, in fact, from Metro to Mars—and I give these transients in our burg's slums all the shelter and sustenance they need—and this is how they pay me back!"

Speaking back into the phone: "Hang on, Mak; I'll go get my pipe…"

And what of the central cannon, which heretofore held the frame of the ex-Ken known as Kevin Strakerstriker?

Well, that device worked juuuuussst fine.

It was right now, in fact, that the Tek=ken was belting off Planet Soilmound, pinballing off of Sanddune, caroming off of Seacrest, and careening off of another iteration of the Steelhull ship—the original one, mind you—only to come coursing back towards Earth, his figure appearing to be a cyboloogie to those who might have observed him from Hubble, but his body still very much intact, if battered by heavenly bodies.

And once Kevin came within range of Earth's orbit once more, he heightened up his arms over his head and craned his neck towards our home, he now Strakerstriking the same pose that he did in his 2010 ending freezeframe, and screaming (despite the void's vacuum):

"I'LL HAVE MY REVENGE ON YOU, STREETCROWN!…UNLESS, OF COURSE, YOU GET DESTROYED BY THE LITERAL STREET PEOPLE AND ENTITIES OTHERWISE, AND THERE'S NO ONE LEFT AND NOT EVEN A PLANET LEFT TO AVENGE MYSELF ON, AND THEN PERHAPS I'LL HAVE TO INITIATE AN INDIEGOGO TO GET THE FUNDS TO REBUILD EVERYTHING…AND THEN IN THAT OFF CHANCE, IF SUPERALIENS WILL BACK ME, THEN MOST ASSUREDLY…"

(CUE STREET FIGHTER 2010 THEME MUSIC…DAA-DAA…DAADAA…DAA-DAA-DAA…DAADAA…DAA-DAA-DAA…GUM, GUM GUM GUM GUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM DAA-DAA…)

END PART FIVE


End file.
